Click-click

Apparently some browsers (e.g. IE) perform a clicking sound on each URL update and this begavior wasn’t really pleasant when map URL was constantly updated when map was dragged. I tweaked a code a little so it updates URL only when dragging is over (link on the right updates in real time) so now you should here reasonable amount of clicking if you use those clicking browsers.

As a side effect URL stays the same when you originally load the page as http://www.sergeychernyshev.com/maps.html

Persisting location attributes in URLs hash

I noticed that new Flash Yahoo! maps interface uses location parameters using URLs hash (text that you can see after # sign).
Apparently it’s quite known way of storing page state when developing AJAX applications and I see several reasons to use it in application like GvsY:

  • It can be updated without reloading the page and therefore can be made always up to date
  • It removes a need for separate permalink because you can bookmark the page at any moment and always get working link (you can click “del.icio.us” link at any moment to store specific location)
  • It helps keep the page in the browsers cache without re-requesting it separately for each location
  • Geographical location fits anchor paradigm pretty well since anchor is a “location within a document” and since this document is AJAX page representing the world map, this location can be geographical too

I liked the idea and that’s why I replaced passing parameters through query string with passing them using hash (or anchor if it sounds better). Enjoy!

Google maps vs. Yahoo! maps permalinks

Yesterday I showed Alex my Google maps vs. Yahoo! maps side-by-side comparision tool that I created so people can easily compare Google maps and Yahoo! maps. And right at that moment I realized that I never posted about it in this blog so here it is.
Alex suggested to add links to both sites so people can go and check ogirinal thing, and finally I got that solved so now you can see “G” and “Y” next to main permalink (see screengrab).

I can say that I enjoy JavaScript development which is a weird thing for a server side developer to say but I stopped using JS (about 10 years ago) only because it was so puny as a technology and now I’m coming to AJAX and JS web services because they really allow making cool stuff pretty easily – whole project took approximately 20 hours of work (spread over a couple of weeks) including learning both APIs, setting up hosting and writing this post.

So please, come and enjoy the fun of searching for differences (coordinates permalink will allow you to link to current position). You can post them as comments to this blog for now, special interface integrated into main page is coming in future releases.

P.S. Looks like Google is not using zoom level in their URL but viewport size instead, also it seams that Google maps quality is much better then they provide with API while Yahoo! is letting you use their production imagery (+1 to Yahoo!).

P.P.S. I had hard time figuring our how to point to Yahoo’s plain maps service so I put a link to their Flash based beta which is noticebly slower on my computer. I’ll be happy to add plain version link if someone will give me a clue how to pass it all parameters.

More features

I was pretty tired past week because of this bullshit with carpeting in my apartment and a lot of information I got from Syndicate and Streaming Media East, but I spent some time on improoving friends interaction as well as feed management.

  • Now you can see not only your friends but people who added as a friend and reading news you shared. You can read their news by clicking “add” button next to their name.
  • Also you can invite friends who are not FeedFriends users yet – just send them invitation e-mail. Once they register, you’ll be added as friends to each others list.
  • Feeds tree is much more functional now and you can add feeds to any level of the group tree as well as delete groups with feeds alltogether. All of thet is reflected accordingly in OPMLs (remember, you can import whole listof preprocessed feeds to you reader with just one URL).
  • I also added rudimentary account setting editor but I will improve it later.

More to come – currently I’m working on following features:

  • Interface to finally be able to place all the different controls into your feed. Backend is already there and quite promising but interface eventually will be quite flexible and will bring more meening to both FeedPreprocessor and InFeedControls subprojects. It will start to appear piece by piece so don’t expect constant miracle ;)
  • Tools to share news and pages directly from the browser – without reader
  • Communities and multiple output channels

Please feel free to post your comments – I’ll be happy to discuss all this (I’m still thinking about putting up a Forum but I hate empty forums – even more then empty comment lists).

Back from Syndicate

Syndicate

Event type: Conference

Date: 2006-05-23

I’m back from the conference. It was quite interesting even though everything looked like early stage for the business.

I loaded my new iPod Video with Rocketboom, installed structured blogging wordpress plugin for this blog and gave away some Feed Friends business cards.

Now it’s time to get more hands dirty with Feed Friends guts – more features to come.

Tags: rss