Problem with Scaredy Cat Films Benchmark Viewer

[ArtMan]

I'm observing some weird behavior with the very excellent Scaredy Cat Films Benchmark Viewer.

I select Pennsylvania, and the map below displays Pennsylvania benchmarks, centered around State College. Then I enter Danville in the Location Search box, and the map changes to Danville, California!

 

or

 

I select Pennsylvania, and the map below displays Pennsylvania benchmarks, centered around State College. Then I enter Clearfield in the Location Search box, and the map changes to Clearfield, Utah!

 

Same with Middleburg (Virginia instead of Pennsylvania) and Wayne (New Jersey instead of Pennsylvania). Philadelphia, however, returned William Penn's town, not the one in Mississippi.

 

I tried several other states, but couldn't reproduce the issue.

 

Anyone else observing this?

 

-ArtMan-

[+dprovan]

That's very amusing! Thanks for the laugh. I notice that searching for "danville, pa" does the right thing, so you can do that to get around it. Apparently the search isn't really "in selected state", despite what the text says. Adding ", pa" is probably easier than scrolling all the way down to "Pennsylvania" anyway, right?

[TillaMurphs]

 

Anyone else observing this?

 

-ArtMan-

 

Yep,

 

I have noticed that feature when searching Oregon and Washington. It seems like it started about the same time as the last major facelift.

 

I just type in the two-letter state abbreviation after the city name and it works fine.

 

What an AWESOME program - it is great.

Edited December 5, 2013 by TillaMurphs

[monkeykat]

Hey Guys, I've always had a little trouble restricting people's searches to the actual state they are viewing. Any city that has a name found in multiple states can be a problem. An example I use for testing is Rochester. It's a city in NY, Minnesota, and Vermont to name a few states. If you just enter Rochester in the search box, google tries to figure out the "most popular" rochester and take you there. Or else it tries to use context clues or something. it may not be the one in the state you are viewing. Google seems to have an interface for world wide regions, but I can't seem to restrict the state.

 

I think what I am going to try is automatically taking on a ", STATE ABBREV" on the end of each search. So Rochster would become Rochester, MN if you were on the Minnesota page. And if you typed in Rochester, MN it would become "Rochester, MN, MN" which seems to work most the time.

 

Easiest thing is to always put a ", STATE" after your searches, but I am working on a better solution. Hope to get something up since now its winter and I go out less.

[+dprovan]

Easiest thing is to always put a ", STATE" after your searches, but I am working on a better solution. Hope to get something up since now its winter and I go out less.

Not that I want to discourage you from finding a perfect solution, but just removing the text "in selected state" and declaring explicitly that the search is the second, unrelated option that it currently is would be find with me. Actually, now that I think about it, I'd be fine just removing the state selection entirely and having a straightforward search, but I live in California where the state selection isn't very useful.

 

This all is being said while recognizing that someone working on something so cool can do whatever they dang well wants with it, and I'd still be happy with the results.