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Comment by andrewla | Hacker News Reader

That is a very jarring experience. I'd much rather get the pins and have to click to see what they are rather than losing half my screen to the list.

Another problem is that it loves to move your viewport -- sometimes just a small zoom out or something, but sometimes moving you entirely, or searching around your current location instead of in the selected map area. I would prefer it if every viewport move had a prompt saying "Hey, I'm going to move your map to some other area" and give me a chance to complain, or have some sort of seamless "save this view" thing that goes into a stack in the corner so I can go back to the view that I was looking at.

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> searching around your current location instead of in the selected map area

This is absolutely infuriating for trip planning.

Isnt there a "Search this area" as you move the map to a different location?

Yup. If the app was map-centric you wouldn't have to ask. Just start showing more markers.

If each query was a layer, you would also have a basic GIS. You could allow the user to start asking spatial questions, such as, "Show me where all the Chinese food restaurants (layer 1) Best Buys (layer 2) are.

"Hmm. I need to go to Best Buy but I'm flexible about food. Let's tap X on the Chinese food layer and search for Poutine restaurants instead."

Yes, but it doesn't show up until after you've done a search, which means the damage may have already been done.

Suppose you want to find things that match X near some landmark Y. As far as I know, you have two options. One is to search for the string "X near Y" and hope Google parses it correctly. The other is to search for Y, memorize its location on the map, search for X (which has a good chance of moving the map view to some random location), pan and zoom back to Y from memory, and click "search this area". It's a huge pain.

Critically, that option only appears after Maps hijacks your view to wherever it pleases. The same applies to other filters too, such as "open now."

I'm stil amazed how hard Maps makes it to view a street name. I can fill my screen with a street and nothing else, and I still won't see its name. I feel like they actually do it on purpose to breed dependence on Maps for navigation references.

> I'm stil amazed how hard Maps makes it to view a street name.

This is one of the reasons I prefer Apple Maps to Google's -- because IMO they do a slightly better job of that. Still wish it would be better, it's a daily nuisance for me.

  > I'm stil amazed how hard Maps makes it to view a street name.

Even worse: rivers and streams

Come on now, guys. Street and landmark names are the LAST things we need from a mapping application...

Worse is when you're looking for something local but it decides there's a great match halfway around the world and zooms you all the way there.

Agreed, the amount of times it defaults to finding something a thousand miles away is significantly more infuriating than the rarer case when I want to specifically do that.

If its a fairly fresh app launch, default to around me

Every time I try to search for Asian, I get sent to Asia while my location is in the US. I have no idea how anyone would find that sort of "typo" correction and redirection halfway around the world useful.

Kids using Maps as a globe would find that useful. Why not search for "Asian food"?

Hmm which use case is more common...kids usings Maps as a globe, or people looking for Asian food?

1. I'm perfectly fine with "Asia" redirecting me to the continent, which is generally expected behavior. I don't understand why a word that clearly means something distinct needs to redirect there as well.

2. The lack of consistency is especially annoying. "Italian" redirects to Italian restaurants in my area, and the same goes for "Chinese", etc.

Where do you land when searching for "Italy" or "China"? I wouldn't call this "lack of consistency".

I'm amazed at how long this particular behavior has persisted...how often does someone search for a local business 5000+ miles away without being explicit about it (ie moving the map to that far off area, or putting it in the search query itself).

I was in NYC 2 weeks ago (live in Miami). If I search for "Walgreens" the first 2 autocomplete suggestions are still locations in Brooklyn, and the third is the general text search for "walgreens". Options 4, 5 and etc onwards are local stores, but also not sorted by distance.

My favorite is when Google Maps asks questions while you're driving.

And when it refuses to accept a vocal "Accept" or "Decline" when those are the buttons, because it doesn't know what you mean.

The critical part you missed out was the default selection that almost never 'surprises' you.

Do you want to take a shorter route? "No | Yes (auto selects in X seconds)"

I feel this is possibly the best way you can provide the options.

I think it should be "Yes | No (auto selects in X seconds)".

I think changing from your current plan unless you panicedly (and in my jurisdiction, illegally) press a button to stay the course is just generally bad UI.

Part of this is I just don't trust Google Maps' new route to actually be faster. It seems Google Maps doesn't properly weigh the cost of these items, which leads to it's suggested route usually being slower:

* Crossing bridges during rush hour.

* Making a left turn without a light across 3 lanes of traffic.

* Going down small residential streets that are too narrow to safely drive the speed limit.

* Routes that require turning onto a busy road without a light and the corner having really poor visibility.

Oh yes. I've been a designer for a (locally) competing maps service, and I failed miserably at convincing the PM and devs that we should do quite a lot of work (changes to already established behavior) to make sure we aren't ever moving a map viewport user has set up, and that violating this rule makes people angry.

This was a constant source of frustration when I did a trip to another country last year. Adjusting the viewport when the user doesn't have data is a bad idea because you can't load assets for the new view. Yet, Google Maps did this all the time.

It's a mix. I like having a list I can very quickly scroll through and filter. Clicking places one by one when there's 20 isn't that fun. You can also slide down the list and click on the map once the results appear though.

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