We're about to roll out a major maps-based feature that we've been working frantically on for the last several weeks (a yelp-like discovery system for amateur athletic events). Despite having extensive past development experience with Google Maps, the price forced us to go with an OSM-based system (MapQuest tiles + Leaflet).
The surprise? Leaflet/OSM is actually a lot nicer to develop against than Google Maps. Leaflet is a superior API, and the fact that it's open source means I'm never left wondering "WTF?" when there is some strange drawing glitch. I'm never going back.
There are a handful of features that Google Maps provides that OSM does not, and the quality of the Google geocoder is slightly superior. But for drawing a map and icons/polygons, scrolling to determine search bounds, etc, OSM is a superior solution. I would never have discovered this without getting "pushed out of the nest" by price.
One catch: To do HTTPS, we have to proxy the tiles. No big deal.
Oops! This is one of those things that was supposed to be rewritten but never did. I guess the lesson is to be more careful about leaving snarky comments in public-facing copy... you might forget to change it.
Thanks for the reminder, this will be fixed this afternoon :)
Nice. However, too bad that on scrolling you set a "position:fixed;" style on the map/calender part. On my netbook screen, I can only see the first row of days on the calender, and because of position:fixed, I can't scroll down to see the rest.
I'm on a MacBookPro. I cannot scroll anymore. The [Add Event] button is obscured. The calendar is doing weird things with the menu - why doesn't voost go over it like the rest?
The problem with wheel-to-zoom is that it breaks the mac touchpad experience (and presumably other trackpads that support gestures). When you use two-finger scrolling, you move the page down until the mouse cursor happens to run over a map section, then the page stops scrolling and you start zooming. It's really annoying.
We explicitly turn off wheel-to-zoom. I suspect most sites do it for the same reason.
Most of our "real" users will probably pick a reasonable boundary around their home and leave it there for their lifetime, so disabling the wheel is probably the right decision for us. If our users did a lot of zoom navigation, we'd probably go the other way.
Unfortunately mobile devices handle the transition of the map element from position:static to position:fixed poorly. It's something we still have to figure out. Thanks for the heads up though!
Yes, using the free MaxMind database. We would rather use the geo data appengine provides but our SSL is proxied by CloudFlare and GAE doesn't recognize the forwarding headers yet.
Think so? I would be surprised if Google, so full of smart people and with enough marketing skills that they took over digital advertizing, really were so inept at negotiation.
It doesn't seem a coincidence to me, that this price change comes not even 2 weeks after their major competitor in the mobile market has committed to a different maps platform.
We're about to roll out a major maps-based feature that we've been working frantically on for the last several weeks (a yelp-like discovery system for amateur athletic events). Despite having extensive past development experience with Google Maps, the price forced us to go with an OSM-based system (MapQuest tiles + Leaflet).
The surprise? Leaflet/OSM is actually a lot nicer to develop against than Google Maps. Leaflet is a superior API, and the fact that it's open source means I'm never left wondering "WTF?" when there is some strange drawing glitch. I'm never going back.
There are a handful of features that Google Maps provides that OSM does not, and the quality of the Google geocoder is slightly superior. But for drawing a map and icons/polygons, scrolling to determine search bounds, etc, OSM is a superior solution. I would never have discovered this without getting "pushed out of the nest" by price.
One catch: To do HTTPS, we have to proxy the tiles. No big deal.