Blue Square Thing

What niraD said in the first instance. And then I wouldn't want to put limits on anyone's ability. If we allow people access they can do all sorts of things.

Visual impairment covers a wide range of ability. I happened to be working through YouTube the other day and came across the woman who won the US version of masterchef - massively visually impaired but can cook at a good enough level to win a fairly significant cookery competition. If you can do that with sharp knives I reckon you'd be able to find most of my caches.

Firstly: not everything like this can be made completely accessible. I have an audio puzzle that simply won't work with a transcript, for example. The image should have alt text though. It will help people understand what's on the page - just that; it's not just platitudes I think; it just respects that the issue I think. Not that I had bothered to add alt text to any of my images in cache descriptions before - writing html in cache descriptions was complex enough (and I've whined written html for 20 years now) and ripped so much stuff out that I don't think I thought about it. Just needs: alt="image of newspaper article containing puzzle text" or something.

You can't use alt text for a puzzle like that. If you want to make that sort of thing accessible you have to have it as plain text either as well as or instead of the image. Or you could have an audio description perhaps, although I doubt that would solve the issue. Alt text on the image to explain that it is an image of a newspaper report, however, makes the page itself more accessible and is a helpful thing to do. It's useful that GS have started to try to encourage it. A transcript for the audio file would be helpful certainly.

It's a reasonable requirement that a website should be accessible to any user. Image descriptions help users who have the content of screens read to them via software such as a screen reader. There are all sorts of reasons why this might be needed. e2a: the UK's Royal National Institute for the Blind has some things to say about alt text (which is what this is): https://www.rnib.org.uk/accessibility-guidelines-alt-text-what-you-need-know It's also really handy if an image doesn't load.

I've found less this year, although that's part of a downward trend anyway. It seems like more people, and more new people, have found my caches though - certainly the traditionals anyway.

Wouldn't this simply apply to >99% of all caches? In that case, it seems sensible to only have a positive attribute.

Also an issue on Safari 12.1.2 on OSX. But if you click on the word "Found it" you get an option to change the log to DNF or Write Note. Which is a nice option, but needs the downward arrow option added back as well. I hadn't realised quite how inefficient the new log page was. It really does need to have the same functionality as the old one.

I believe people have owned up to dragging in random text from wikipedia articles to pad logs as well - I don't know if that's also automated or not. If people need to pad logs out to make themselves feel better or something then there's nothing very much anyone else can do about it. Just ignore them.

I find the paragraphs saying "hey, thanks but I prefer to find caches to writing logs" and then filling in the cache owner's name and date using a macro or something are even more boring. Especially when they fill the log with sets of emojis; and then their buddy who found the cache at the same time does the same thing. Ugh - find one log by them and you've found them all just about.

It's fine for me - Safari 12.1.2 on Mac OSX. You may need to say which browser/OS you're using - different browsers will behave differently at times.

I thought it opened a larger map, but with just the waypoints for the cache on it? But I may be misremembering. I'd settle for that as an option first - especially for longer multis and so on.

I don't know if you were thinking of any particular cache, but The Night Mail uses this method - once you get past the first stage of the puzzle.

Didn't that used to be possible when you clicked the "view larger map" option above the thumbnail map? I think it might even have only displayed the information about that cache - I don't remember.

Exotic is all a matter of opinion and seems at least partly dependent on where you in the world. My favourite cache is in Edinburgh - not, in my view, particularly exotic, but The One O'Clock Gun was an interesting exploration, a lovely spot for the final cache and remains the single best cache page I've seen - bar none. To me, New England in the autumn seems exotic.

Which, from my pov at least, would be much appreciated. Unless this is all a wheeze to make them all D5 as you "need an app, and that's, like, specialist equipment". So that people can get lots of D5 caches. (yeah, bored of that approach as well...)

No, not at all - and they all show on the map. Which is why it's not really an issue, just a bit odd. Not even sure why I even noticed it as I rarely use the search map.

OK, really odd thing occurring. It's not significant at all, but... Sometimes - but not all the time - when I look at the cache sidebar the word PREMIUM is displayed when the cache isn't a PMO cache. See screenshot. Some "testing" of this, and it seems to occur only **after** I click on a cache **on the map*** that is disabled - after which every cache I click on has PREMIUM displayed. When I click on the search list on the side panel it doesn't occur at all - just when I pick a cache on the map (to the extent that the same cache listing picked from the side search panel doesn't display Premium - but does when picked off of the map - but only after I've clicked on a disabled cache from the map (not the side bar)). After refresh the behaviour goes back to expected until I click on a disabled cache from the map again. This occurs for all non-disabled caches clicked from the map once the behaviour starts (disabled just have disabled shown). It happens after I click on any disabled cache I can see on the map - ones I've found and ones I've not found. I'm not a premium member so I have no idea what the behaviour for one of those is like. I'm using the new search map with Safari 12.1.2 on OSX 10.12.6 (Sierra).

Unless it's a very old phone (pre-iPhone 4), my gut feeling is that this is a human being error rather than one caused by using a phone per se. As ecanderson suggests, it always seems to be the same people who get the major errors.

I was thinking exactly of the one on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh when I mentioned that. Iirc there's also one outside Earl's Court tube station in London.

The cache owner has probably done exactly as you suspected and made them a "Premium Member Only" cache. This means you won't see them on any map view when you're zoomed in (if you zoom way out you might see them appear when the icons turn into dots, but even then you can't click on them. There's probably a good reason for them doing that.

Out of interest, how long does that drive take?

That's in the whole-site settings - the arrow at the top right next to your name and then preferences at the bottom. You can change the date format as well.

As a fwiw, you don't need to be premium to find this information. If you go to another cache in Darwin (I used Name the hiders challenge) and scroll down to the bit by the little map then you can click the Find all nearby caches link. That search page gives you the information you need to know.

Yes, me to. It helps that the option is available. A while back I asked (and got an answer) how to update the final coordinates on a puzzle or multi cache. I wonder if ti's possible to include that on the text for cache owners if they're updating the coordinates? Something like: "This will change the published coordinates. If you want to..." - if it were possible to do this conditionally based on the cache type?