Google Maps lays the boom down on Mapquest/Yahoo Maps/name-the-mapping service...

[Ishamael]

Check it out: maps.google.com
Amazing stuff. Hmm, wonder if they have any openings....

[Lox]

Awesome.

Google once again outdoes themselves.

[Ishamael]

Well, some slashdot comments pointed me to something called Map24 (map24.com of course). It uses a Java applet for it's mapping and yes, it's indeed a little better, as far as I can tell right now.

Neat stuff.

[the Gray]

I like their system far better than MapQuest and Yahoo that's for sure. I've put in cities and streets I've used with MQ/Yahoo to test it's accuracy and I'm very impressed. Where MQ/Yahoo struggled to find the right place sometimes, Google did it with ease and frightening accuracy.

I do like that MQ/Yahoo have added things like 'places of interest' and such. Finding a Hotel with WiFi along a trip route, or a good restaurant, makes for some good planning.

[Kupek]

I was able to find where my apartment is (Williamsburg, VA) and find the route I've taken (twice) to my friend who lives right on the ocean (Virginia Beach, VA; about an hour and a half away), while at the third lowest resolution. I actually didn't remember the route numbers, but I was able to figure out which roads it must have been. This is certainly better than the other ones I've used where scrolling a map takes a page load.


I can't try the Map24 because Firefox doesn't know where the jvm is. Ah well.

[Shellie]

Wow, very very cool. Only problem I had were some blocks that werent loading. Im at work, so it could be a speed issue (we have one cable modem for about 40 ppl at a time)

[SineSwiper]

Hmmm...I thought it was a case of Google reinventing the wheel, but it does seem to be a big improvement over the other map sites. Google seems to have a knack for taking an idea and making it vastly better. The inter-connectivity with the search engine definately helps things.

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

And fuck, no flash or java! Google have the best fucking web developers in the world on staff, no doubt.

[SineSwiper]

Why the hell do you need Flash or Java for a map site?

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

Dude, fucking look at what that site does! Dynamically zoom in and out and move around on a map of the entire United fuckin' States of America! Your average client-side web programmer would not dream of producing such a feat without use of Flash or Java. Your garden genius client-side web programmer might think that such a feat might be possible, but would never dream of producing it. Can you imagine how difficult something like this would be to write? I can, barely, and my mind has been blown!

[SineSwiper]

Heh...I didn't even notice it. I forgot to check the zoom stuff.

Blah, without even looking at the source code: the buttons are floating images within the main page, with the map as an IFRAME. Zooms are done with a reload of the IFRAME. The scrolling is a simple Javascript function that scrolls the IFRAME, though it would require a hidden IFRAME to fetch the data and place the images into the map's IFRAME. The latter part would be a little bit harder to do, but possible.

Here's my latest technological feat involving IFRAMEs, Javascript, and CSS: CMTT. Though the real program uses Perl, you can tell with these static pages how much you can do without having to interupt the flow of the page. Try clicking on the Update buttons. (The real program only Updates one table, BTW.) Try right-clicking on the black bar at the top, and hit "Show only this frame". (Useless HTML comment padding was added to the backend to simulate loading of the SNMP stats, so that's why it ends up being a 500K file.)

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

Nah dude, you're way off. Only one iframe is involved and it's purpose looks to be tangential - it's not used by the map at all. The page is actually constantly fetching data from the servers (using XMLHttpRequest, maybe?) in the background and updating what you see using the DOM and Javascript - there's no page refreshing going on. I really don't think you appreciate just how amazing the site is.

[SineSwiper]

I seriously doubt it's using something as new as XMLHttpRequest. Hell, it took about EIGHT LONG FUCKING YEARS to get CSS1 and HTML DOM into all of the modern browsers, never mind CSS2. The operation of constantly loading is used in CGI::IRC, which is a really cool HTML<->IRC engine. I do think that Google's use of Javascript and HTML is amazing, but it's not unique.

Also, I see that they feed their finished JS code into FuckUpTheVariableNamesAndTurnItIntoAObfuscatedFuckingMess(code);

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

You'd be surprised - XMLHttpRequest is supported by most of the recent iterations of the common browsers. Gmail uses it; it's why it's so quick. I'd be surprised if Google Maps isn't using it as well. I don't see how else they could be grabbing so much specific data from their servers so quickly.

I think we're looking at this thing through different lenses. I really don't see what could be so compelling on the client-side about an IRC to HTML engine. But maps: it's not using reloading at all, it uses a custom widget (the slider) flawlessly - do you realise clever that damned slider is alone? - it allows you to move around the map by clicking and dragging - man, do you realise how non-trivial it is to write client-side HTML/JavaScript/CSS that is aware of the mouse?

Sorry if I sound crazy, but I feel like someone has presented me with the grandest meal that I've ever seen, and you're telling me it's all sawdust. Gmail's interactivity and speed was amazing enough, but maps! Maps! My god!

(and yeah, Google are known for writing really obfuscated JavaScript. Gmail is hard enough to try to figure out - I wouldn't like to be tasked with reverse-engineering the maps code)

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

Note also: I would hate to be tasked with the responsibility of reverse-engineering <i>anything</i>. My brain isn't wired for it :).

[SineSwiper]

Actually, I did think the slider was the most difficult part of it. I haven't even attempted to write code that works with the mouse like that. And I didn't realize GMail used XMLHttpRequest. Actually, how did you find that out? I can't even read most of the JS code or search for "XMLHttpRequest" on any of it. (And what was great about GMail's interactivity? I didn't think it had much besides the standard "display block on/off" stuff.)

As far as CGI::IRC, have you used it? I think the aspect of being able to maintain two-way communication on an HTML interface is great. I could probably write that kind of communication now, but I was impressed with it when I first saw it.

EDIT: Okay, I do see the XMLHttp request thing. Is that an ActiveX control?

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

I haven't used CGI::IRC, but I just don't see how compelling it could be on the client side.

Google "gmail xmlhttprequest" and you'll find a bunch of people talking about Gmail's use of XMLHttpRequest.

How many web email clients have you used? Gmail is the fastest by far, because with each click you're not sending a request for and then receiving a new page. You're sending a (small) XML data structure, and receiving another one in return; Gmail then uses JavaScript to rebuild the page that you're looking at given the data structure you've received. This is what makes it so cool (also accessibility-lacking, unfortunately) - it really is dynamic HTML. It's not turning the display of block elements on or off. It's completely rebuilding itself according to data structures it's sending to and receiving from home base.

And maps, maps! Maps offers functionality approaching a desktop app - simple widgets you control with the mouse, a draggable and zoomable map of a pretty frickin' huge and complex country - using existing web technologies. It kicks ass over the map services that exist at the moment, but more importantly I think maps reveals how close now web apps (well, the ones that Google are turning out, anyway) are to the functionality of rich local clients.

[SineSwiper]

Interesting. I'll have to research some more on XMLHttpRequest. As long as the communication between the server/client is fast, you can pretty much port any type of protocol or client as a HTML page (without Flash, etc.).

[Zhuge Liang 2]

I imagine most mapping/navigation companies with a web presence are scrambling to catch up, like my company is. As I told a collegue, we got map-served by Google. I think we have an idea of how they did it. In fact, I've even discussed a similar approach with collegues for scalability reasons. Although to be honest, I didn't dream up anything as slick as what Google did. Now I'm to head the effort to catch up :? . I just hope they'll give me enough manpower to get the job done right.

Zhuge Liang

[SineSwiper]

If you don't mind me asking, who do you work for?

[Ishamael]

Dude, fucking look at what that site does! Dynamically zoom in and out and move around on a map of the entire United fuckin' States of America! Your average client-side web programmer would not dream of producing such a feat without use of Flash or Java. Your garden genius client-side web programmer might think that such a feat might be possible, but would never dream of producing it. Can you imagine how difficult something like this would be to write? I can, barely, and my mind has been blown!

I could kinda imagine how to do it, but I can't imagine how they do it so freakin' FAST. Knowing how much traffic google gets, they must have some crazy combination of hardware/software to make receiving requests, rendering maps, and dispachting those maps so fast. Wouldn't mind looking at their setup someday.

[Ishamael]

I imagine most mapping/navigation companies with a web presence are scrambling to catch up, like my company is. As I told a collegue, we got map-served by Google. I think we have an idea of how they did it. In fact, I've even discussed a similar approach with collegues for scalability reasons. Although to be honest, I didn't dream up anything as slick as what Google did. Now I'm to head the effort to catch up :? . I just hope they'll give me enough manpower to get the job done right.

Zhuge Liang

There are some pretty thorough breakdowns of this, at least on the Javascript/HTML/XML/client side imaging stuff. Some guy has a nice blog post concerning this. The REAL secret though is the hardware and software used on the backend to make the image rendering (and such NICE images if I may so) so quick.

[Ishamael]

If you don't mind me asking, who do you work for?

Zhuge? Probably boy-whore.com if I had to guess.