DonMartini
06/08/06 08:59 AM
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Uh oh! I think we have a problem. Google maps has made some kind of update whereby you automatically will be transfered to the centre of a city. So if you have found something by typing 'Rome, Italy' for example, you won't see the site, but the centre of Rome.
I guess this is something to look after...
Good luck,
Maarten
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kjfitz
06/08/06 11:34 AM
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Thanks for making us aware of the problem. Let us look over the various options and we (nic) will then do something.
kjfitz
Virtual Globetrotting Moderator
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dda
06/08/06 02:55 PM
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The same everywhere.
The only way i've found to avoid this problem is to not fill the search field. But now, you have the ugly and place waste vertical "Example searches" bar.
dda
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dda
06/08/06 02:59 PM
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I just noticed that they have replaced the red pin by a strange dead christmas tree.
dda
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AKpilotEMT
06/08/06 03:17 PM
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Yeah, I'm seeing this problem now and NOT liking it.
I've been entering coordinates lately to find certain places and when the coordinates are not exact then i need to zoom way in and look closely within an 1/8th of a mile or so... but now there's not even an arrow when i enter the coordinates and when you zoom way in the arrow moved a bit out of screen so some recentering would have to be manually done and the arrow helped me know where I'd be looking (then to submit a map I could re-find the spot without the arrow) ... now without the arrow upon entering coordinates it's not easy to locate that exact spot where something might be (if it's something large like an airport with paved runways then there'd be no problem but a possible extinct dirt runway or a small heliport ... or maybe a house or something small... HA, no luck.)
Okay, that has no real bearing on how Virtual Globetrotting works but it has an impact on my searching for stuff i want to find!
What is happening with Google Maps makes this site look almost dead. I was just rolling again with new maps! (I've got over 30 done and ready to add!)
Is this the end?
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dda
06/08/06 03:29 PM
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All the maps with city in the http address are now wrong.
dda
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kjfitz
06/08/06 04:03 PM
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In the moderator forums we're discussing how to fix this.
kjfitz
Virtual Globetrotting Moderator
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TexasAndroid
06/08/06 04:08 PM
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This is not the end. The Lat/Log are still there in all the URLs. This is going to take some work by Nic, the site admin/owner, to clean up, but all the needed data is still there in the URLs.
Right now we Managers could manually start cleaning search terms out of the URLs, but given the number of maps, that's a project of immense scale.
So I think we're going to need to wait for Nic to be able to come up with a behind the scenes solution to the situation. And depending on his workload, that may take a few days. I know we all want things to be back at once, but this may be a time for a little patience. All the pieces of the fix are still there in the VGT database, Nic just needs to find the correct solution for the current situation, and the time to implement that solution.
So this is far from the END for VGT.
TexasAndroid
Virtual Globetrotting Moderator
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kjfitz
06/08/06 04:21 PM
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I just found a clumsy workaround.
Navigate to the map you want and click 'link to this page' as you always do.
If you had a city and state/country in the URL or address bar the map now jumps to the 'center' of the city.
Copy the long/lat from the ll= field of the URL and paste it in as the q= parameter.
Example:
This eiffel Tower URL that screws up by jumping to central Paris:
http://www.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=paris+france&t=k&om=1&ll=48.858274,2.294552&spn=0.001211,0.00339
becomes:
http://www.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=48.858274,2.294552&t=k&om=1&ll=48.858274,2.294552&spn=0.001211,0.00339
The URL now works as it did before this change with a full width screen and no push-pin or dead tree icons.
In the 'old days' there would have been a red push-pin where the URL was, it is no longer there.
---
Another workaround for new posts is to just enter the country, instead of city and country, that eliminates push-pins and gives you a wide screen too.
kjfitz
Virtual Globetrotting Moderator
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nic
06/08/06 04:44 PM
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Uggh way for Google to break backwords-compatiblity. I'd be suprised if they kept this for very long, I'm sure there are millions of links out there that are now essentially 'broken'.
However, VGT has already corrected for this error.  We're basically dropping the q= part of the Google Maps url and building our own URL from scratch from the lat/lon that we know.
Let me know if there are any problems, but my quick 1-line fix seems to work fine.
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dda
06/08/06 05:54 PM
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You're great, Nic !
The reason why they did that is probably because no one should avoid the beautiful half vertical blank screen.
Potentially advertising space...
dda
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AKpilotEMT
06/08/06 07:27 PM
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Quote:
I'd be suprised if they kept this for very long, I'm sure there are millions of links out there that are now essentially 'broken'.
What about those millions of broken map links? Could that be something Google just doesn't care about?
The replacement fix seems to work but it's not perfect. No longer is it capable of showing location except in coordinate form. Yes, location should be in the map description page but still...
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kjfitz
06/08/06 07:47 PM
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A bit cludgey but this also works:
q=48.858165,2.294340+(Paris,France)
This also works:
q=0,0+(Paris,France)
Edited by kjfitz (06/08/06 07:57 PM)
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AKpilotEMT
06/09/06 08:04 AM
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Quote:
q=48.858165,2.294340+(Paris,France)
This one's better than the second. Looks better than just the coordinates there.
I'm just glad it's workin again. Was fretting there for a moment. Literally fretting. Almost did some duck and cover drills, thought the world might end!
Wonder how long before Google's flooded with complaints and they change it back. Surely they know what's happening. Right?! Fine to keep the upside down, lightless Christmas tree... but the Link To This Page function has become completely useless!
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romulusnr
06/09/06 05:20 PM
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This has got to be a Google bug, because it breaks "Link to this page" links.
Try it... Search for a city, scan out of the city, then click "Link to this page". Whee!
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romulusnr
06/09/06 05:22 PM
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And I really don't know why Google doesn't give you the ability to hide the damned sidebar like Yahoo does (and to a limited extent, so does LL). Google added that little corner overview map practically the day Yahoo Beta (which has a similar corner map) went live.
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kjfitz
06/09/06 05:33 PM
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They've changed the precedence of the parameters. Before the ll= (log/lat) always took precedence if it was there and whatever was in q= was just treated as datafill.
Now it first positions the map at the ll= coordinates but then shifts to the q= location.
That last little bit is new.
Also the push pin is now associated with the ll= instead of the q= but only created when it has to do a lookup of the long/lat based on what it derives from the data in the search field.
kjfitz
Virtual Globetrotting Moderator
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AKpilotEMT
06/12/06 08:03 AM
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Why's this showing the billboard?
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=32.767141,-96.993184&t=k&om=0&ll=32.757072,-97.011595&spn=0.005612,0.01678
I just submitted a few maps with this format... do you automatically correct it so there's no billboard?
Ugh. Can I keep submitting with that format URL or what? Please advice.
Thanks!
CW
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AKpilotEMT
06/12/06 08:08 AM
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And...
I submitted this a few days ago:
http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&t=k&ll=32.73200300,-96.97593200
When clicking for the Google Map,
why does it show up in that stupid half screen and not the full w i d e s c r e e n?
(i never submit half screen maps. can't stand them!)
thanks again
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TexasAndroid
06/12/06 10:39 AM
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Google changed things such that it broke the page for almost any link that included the q= section. The format you give above would not be broken, but large parts of the site were broken. Any page that had a city, or city/country in the q= was broken, which was a large percentage of the maps on this site.
Nic introduced a quick and dirty fix to have the site rebuild all Google URLs on the fly to get around this change. The fix is not perfect, but it does the job for now. We are not done with the issue, by far, so things may change a bit more.
But for now, as long as Google has the contents of the q= section overriding the lat/lon, there's not much we can do with the site besides rebuild the URL on the fly.
TexasAndroid
Virtual Globetrotting Moderator
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AKpilotEMT
06/12/06 12:15 PM
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Well, i just hope there's the ability to have nice, clean W i d e s c r e e n maps when those are what are submitted. I was even going to volunteer to send in new URLs for maps I find that are not w i d e s c r e e n format. (I just can't stand the half screens!)
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TexasAndroid
06/12/06 02:28 PM
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Actually, since we are now building the URL on the fly in all GMaps cases, I have an idea to take care of this once and for all.
nic, could you add to the code that builds the URL a section to add a "q=lat,lon" like AKpilotEMT showed a few comments back? If that works, then we'll have the wide-screen on every link out of this page.
That then only leaves the missing span values to deal with.
TexasAndroid
Virtual Globetrotting Moderator
Edited by TexasAndroid (06/12/06 02:30 PM)
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kjfitz
06/12/06 05:40 PM
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This just changed again. Obviously Google hasn't figured out how they are going to do this and are using us as beta testers.
Now... if you put in q=<lat/long> as you mention above you get the dead christmas tree and a balloon with the coordinates as a pointer. Yesterday you didn't.
Right now the only thing that seems to work for a full screen without shifting the focus or getting the dead tree is q=<country>.
I suggest one of two things:
1) We let this debounce and see what happens after another week of Google messing with the code.
2) Or if we really want something implemented now we should go with building a URL and insert the q=<country> on the fly. The country name can be extracted from the submission data as every database entry should have a country assigned.
kjfitz
Virtual Globetrotting Moderator
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dda
06/12/06 07:58 PM
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The new Google Earth application allows a full screen mode.
dda
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nic
06/12/06 08:13 PM
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Hmm I'd rather wait a week and see what happens before making more changes. Sounds like they're still trying to figure things out. Anyone know of posts on other forums with other upset users?
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DonMartini
06/15/06 02:09 PM
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An other thing I was wondering: is there something you can do about the zoom level? Cause now the view is completely zoomed in. Probably this issue is mentioned already, but I couldn't found it that fast.
I'm happy though that everything works again! If google-maps keeps bothering us, maybe this site provides new oppurtunities: http://maps.ask.com/maps .
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TexasAndroid
06/16/06 08:17 AM
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That's the Span issue I mentioned a few posts back. It's not instantly solvable like the lat/lon thing was. The site has stored the lat/lon of the maps separately for a long time for a variety of reasons. That allowed Nic to add one line of code to rebuild the URLs as needed, because all the separate pieces for a basic GMaps URL were stored. But I do not beleive we separately store the Span/view level data. Which means that before that could be used to rebuild the URLs, it would need to be extracted from all 19K maps into new database fields. A bit more complicated of a job..... Especially when GMaps may still be in flux.
TexasAndroid
Virtual Globetrotting Moderator
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nic
06/18/06 02:42 AM
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Thankfully, the database still stores the original "submitted-with" url so we have the &spn= field saved for maps submitted with a google maps URL. I can parse this out on the fly.
OK, I've made two changes:
1) The q=lat,lon was added to google map urls so we 'go widescreen'
2) For google map urls, if the map was submitted with a google maps URL and it has the proper span level (&spn=xxx), I'll tack that onto the new 'rebuilt' url so it'll look essentially the same as the submission.
Let me know of any problems.
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kjfitz
06/18/06 02:45 AM
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lat/long in the q= gives us a dead christmas tree pointer and ballon. Can you insert <country> instead?
kjfitz
Virtual Globetrotting Moderator
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nic
06/18/06 02:48 AM
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Yep, changed. I didn't see any side-effects, but let me know if you find any.
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kjfitz
06/18/06 02:49 AM
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Perfect!!
kjfitz
Virtual Globetrotting Moderator
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DonMartini
06/19/06 06:28 AM
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Wow! Everything is fixed again! Compliments!
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Hinkkanen
06/19/06 01:47 PM
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Great work! Been away most of the week and it's nice to come back and see that even my old submissions open now to a full width screen.
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romulusnr
06/19/06 03:33 PM
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I found a workaround... Manually tweak the Q to the country name. GM doesn't place a pin for countries, so it won't force you away from the LL.
Hmm. I guess this is the workaround you guys came up with too.
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TexasAndroid
06/28/06 02:40 PM
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Ok. We're not at 100% yet.
Certain countries (North Korea) still show the add bar on the left.
Some still do the dead tree bit, and yank the image off target (Hong Kong). On this latter, I suspect that it's because the country and city name match, so it is still acting like we are giving a city name.
TexasAndroid
Virtual Globetrotting Moderator
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romulusnr
06/28/06 02:54 PM
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"Korea" by itself will work.
For Hong Kong, "China" would work. (For some reason "Macao" does not have the same problem.)
Technically it doesn't matter what place name you use If you say "China" for something Africa it won't care.
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kjfitz
06/28/06 03:02 PM
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"Congo, the Democratic Republic of the" too. Most countries that have the name "The <blah blah> of <whatever>" and usually go by the <whatever> are off.
I'm fine with that.
Maybe nic can add a todo to map the names someday but I'm not going to lose sleep over it as things are SO much better than when they were broken.
Others (by no means complete, just the ones I guessed and checked)
Congo, the Democratic Republic of the
Heard Island and Mcdonald Islands
Macedonia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of
Micronesia, Federated States of
Tanzania, United Republic of
Virgin Islands, U.s.
Virgin Islands, British
kjfitz
Virtual Globetrotting Moderator
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TexasAndroid
06/28/06 05:22 PM
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Ok. This one is a problem. Items in Georgia (country) are being jumped to a spot in Georgia (US State). ^_^;;
TexasAndroid
Virtual Globetrotting Moderator
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TexasAndroid
06/29/06 03:53 PM
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Guatemala, like Hong Kong, is another that drags the user off the spot of the map, making the entries for these countries all but useless.
TexasAndroid
Virtual Globetrotting Moderator
Edited by TexasAndroid (06/29/06 03:53 PM)
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romulusnr
06/29/06 04:05 PM
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What is most annoying about all this is that it is a Google bug. I don't see how it can be interpreted any other way. "Link to this location" should link you to THIS LOCATION, not something else, certainly not what's in the query box, but the location you are currently viewing. It doesnt jibe.
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romulusnr
06/29/06 04:54 PM
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"Panama" takes you to Panama City (which is odd as Djibouti and Mexico don't have the same problem)
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TexasAndroid
06/30/06 10:24 AM
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I think what we need is a generic term to put in the q= field for these problem ones. Maybe for all maps. If we can come up with a generic search term that 1) does not generate dead trees, 2) does not yank the location off of the lat/long, 3) prevents the left ad section, and 4) is generic enough to not distract from viewing. If we can find something like this then it could be added instead of the country in the q= field of the generated URLs for at least the problem countries, if not for all entries.
I'm not having any brilliant ideas as to what to use, though. In theory we could just select a working country and use that one country for all maps, but that would likely violate #4 above, since if someone looked closely at the URL they might wonder why a map for Guatemala was showing France in the URL, as an example. It would work, but it would not be clean. I'm not coming up with a good solution, though.
TexasAndroid
Virtual Globetrotting Moderator
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romulusnr
06/30/06 02:31 PM
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The other problem with all of this is that any such solution only works until GMaps changes behaviour again. Like, say they suddenly decide that a country name in q= places a pin at the geog. center of the country.
Frankly, I think people should encourage Google to revert the behavior. I'm a little surprised it's not more of an issue outside VGT-land.
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romulusnr
06/30/06 06:01 PM
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http://groups.google.com/group/Google-Maps-Troubleshooting/browse_frm/thread/3db5aac2d592336e?hl=en
Wonder if that'll go anywhere.
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nic
07/03/06 03:20 AM
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I really hope we get some traction on this issue, quite annoying.
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kjfitz
07/08/06 05:20 PM
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I think they fixed the dead christmas tree drift. Now when q= has a city and state or city and country the map does not go zooming off somewhere else when you click "link to this page."
kjfitz
Virtual Globetrotting Moderator
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romulusnr
07/09/06 03:06 PM
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I noticed that this morning... Note though that if you zoom out to include the tree and zoom down you'll be zooming into a view with the tree in it. Progress, I guess.
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