New map icons

[+HHL]

[...] Sure glad they're not in control of my Garmin.

 

Sure they do on newer Garmins:

 

 

Hans

[+FunnyNose]

[...] Sure glad they're not in control of my Garmin.

 

Sure they do on newer Garmins:

 

 

Hans

 

Yet another reason to stay with POIs

[+HHL]

[...] Sure glad they're not in control of my Garmin.

 

Sure they do on newer Garmins:

 

 

Hans

 

Yet another reason to stay with POIs

 

No, use Custom Symbols (click here) instead.

 

Hans

[+MaliBooBoo]

 

No, use Custom Symbols (click here) instead.

 

Hans

I might have done something wrong, but I loaded the custom symbols for geocaching on my 750 soon after I received it and they didn't work. Custom symbols perhaps may no longer work for geocaching on new units?

[+AustinMN]

I am a software developer. I have been for over 30 years. I have only met two or three other developers who believed it was important to learn the fundamentals of good interface design. I never heard a single user interface complaint about the work of those who took it seriously. The rest created mediocre to terrible user interfaces.

 

One of the vital rules about interface design is:

 

Never, ever rely on color to convey information.

Edited December 8, 2016 by AustinMN

[+lee737]

I may be wrong, I have had some serious eye problems this year.... BUT.... I think that the colours have been tweaked. I now seem to be able to much more easily pick up the difference between the green and blue dots on the map....

[+The A-Team]

I may be wrong, I have had some serious eye problems this year.... BUT.... I think that the colours have been tweaked. I now seem to be able to much more easily pick up the difference between the green and blue dots on the map....

I don't think so. I just compared the current colours to some screenshots posted the other day, and the colours seem the same.

[+lee737]

I may be wrong, I have had some serious eye problems this year.... BUT.... I think that the colours have been tweaked. I now seem to be able to much more easily pick up the difference between the green and blue dots on the map....

I don't think so. I just compared the current colours to some screenshots posted the other day, and the colours seem the same.

 

You are right I think - looking at the 10km zoom it looks better, but I think this is a result of there being more dots clustered, and the *slight* difference is easier to pick up, at the usual 1 and 2km zoom I tend to use, nothing has changed

[+The A-Team]

...looking at the 10km zoom it looks better, but I think this is a result of there being more dots clustered, and the *slight* difference is easier to pick up, at the usual 1 and 2km zoom I tend to use, nothing has changed

Yes, the icons tend to get closer together at lower zooms, which makes it easier to see the difference. A single icon in isolation, though, is much harder to identify.

[+noncentric]

I'm not color-blind, but I am having a lot of difficulty differentiating green vs dark blue dots on the map when the zoom level is 13 or less. Zoom 13 was my preferred zoom level when viewing the map, but I now have to use Zoom 14+ to effectively differentiate the icons.

[+hal-an-tow]

Plenty of good points made here , I'll not repeat myself apart from blowing a big raspberry at the new icon set on grounds of practicality.

Thank goodness for GSAK ...

[+J Grouchy]

I don't understand the people saying they are having trouble differentiating the blue and green. There's nothing special about my eyesight, but I'm not having any difficulty. ~shrug~

[+Ambrosia]

Once again things that no one is asking for to be changed get changed.

 

I don't like the fact that my caches show up as dull green circles with a white star in them. They get a little lost with the green unfound icon and the coloring of Google maps. I prefer the old bright yellow star icons.

 

Owned caches is the only thing I'm really unhappy about. They do not pop out at all, like the old yellow stars did. It's very difficult to tell where your owned caches are on the map.

[+The A-Team]

I don't understand the people saying they are having trouble differentiating the blue and green. There's nothing special about my eyesight, but I'm not having any difficulty. ~shrug~

Everyone's vision is different. While some people may be colour blind to the point of being utterly unable to distinguish between the blue and green, you may have a particularly good ability to distinguish between them.

 

As for myself, I fall somewhere in the middle. I'm not colour blind, but I still have trouble distinguishing the green and blue icons at a glance. I can easily see the difference if I linger on them, but lingering on one spot means inefficient use of the map. A user should be able to scan across the icons and immediately recognize what they represent. I would have thought that would be taught in the first week of a UI/UX course, but maybe that isn't the case.

[+DragonsWest]

Looking at the icon for a Virtual - it looks like the Snapchat logo.

[+HH58]

Please, please bring back the old icons !!! They were much easier to be distinguished from each other, and the new ones are so ugly - they make my eyes hurt

[+Original A1]

Thank goodness for GSAK ...

Not all of us have this facility. I use a Mac. Does GSAK exist for Mac yet? It didn't used to.

 

[+NYPaddleCacher]

Thank goodness for GSAK ...

Not all of us have this facility. I use a Mac. Does GSAK exist for Mac yet? It didn't used to.

 

 

GSAK is a windows application only. The only ways you can run it on a Mac is if you run Windows on the mac using a dual boot system like Bootcamp, run Windows in a VM Container (VMWare, Parallels, Virtual Box) or use a windows application emulator such as Wine. I've never had any other reason to run Windows or a Windows application on my MAC so I've never done it.

 

While GSAK can be run for free, it's nagware feature makes it very annoying after running it a few times. It's not worth paying $30 to me just to see a different set of icons.

 

 

[+Michaelcycle]

Thank goodness for GSAK ...

Not all of us have this facility. I use a Mac. Does GSAK exist for Mac yet? It didn't used to.

 

 

GSAK is a windows application only. The only ways you can run it on a Mac is if you run Windows on the mac using a dual boot system like Bootcamp, run Windows in a VM Container (VMWare, Parallels, Virtual Box) or use a windows application emulator such as Wine. I've never had any other reason to run Windows or a Windows application on my MAC so I've never done it.

 

While GSAK can be run for free, it's nagware feature makes it very annoying after running it a few times. It's not worth paying $30 to me just to see a different set of icons.

Especially galling given that I already pay Groundspeak $30/year for what HAD been a perfectly functional set of icons!

[+Gwendal12]

I feel the new icons are according to the new lean style which is very popular at the moment. Unfortunately they are looking ugly. Only good for IBM 286er users, they will display much faster . I wish to get a choice in the user settings to go back to the old ones.

[+colleda]

I don't really care much what colour they are, as I would probably not remember what colour is what, so long as I can make out the little icons depicting the cache type. Much ado about nothing much methinks.

[+Team Microdot]

What I find frustrating is that while investing time in 'improving' the map, they still haven't fixed the bug which results in the icons ceasing to respond to mouseover events after a very short space of time, requiring a browser refresh to get them displaying popups again

[+DragonsWest]

What I find frustrating is that while investing time in 'improving' the map, they still haven't fixed the bug which results in the icons ceasing to respond to mouseover events after a very short space of time, requiring a browser refresh to get them displaying popups again

 

Something I could certainly do with is showing the name of the Pocket Query somewhere, when I've selected one the view on the map. Last month I worked for a few days on a long road trip and it was maddening trying to keep track of which browser window was which query. This would probably be a very simple change, but who knows, it might take a few more years to beat out such great ideas as new map icons nobody asked for.

[+The A-Team]

...new map icons nobody asked for.

...but, "consistency"! Aren't things so much better now that the icons on the website are the same as in the app?

[+Viajero Perdido]

...new map icons nobody asked for.

The more pages there are in a given Release Notes thread, the less correlation between what management asked for, and what users asked for.

[+DragonsWest]

...new map icons nobody asked for.

The more pages there are in a given Release Notes thread, the less correlation between what management asked for, and what users asked for.

 

That sounds suspiciously like an axiom.

[cezanne]

I don't understand the people saying they are having trouble differentiating the blue and green. There's nothing special about my eyesight, but I'm not having any difficulty. ~shrug~

 

At zoom level 12 and below?

[+Zekester & Simon]

Thank goodness for GSAK ...

Not all of us have this facility. I use a Mac. Does GSAK exist for Mac yet? It didn't used to.

 

 

Try Project-GC. It is platform independent (web based), has scads of functionality, routinely updated in useful ways, and run by folks who value and respond to end-user input.

[+DragonsWest]

Thank goodness for GSAK ...

Not all of us have this facility. I use a Mac. Does GSAK exist for Mac yet? It didn't used to.

 

 

Try Project-GC. It is platform independent (web based), has scads of functionality, routinely updated in useful ways, and run by folks who value and respond to end-user input.

 

+1

[+Michaelcycle]

Thank goodness for GSAK ...

Not all of us have this facility. I use a Mac. Does GSAK exist for Mac yet? It didn't used to.

 

 

Try Project-GC. It is platform independent (web based), has scads of functionality, routinely updated in useful ways, and run by folks who value and respond to end-user input.

But it does not (at least as presented to my screen) show PMO caches a glance.

[+MartyBartfast]

Thank goodness for GSAK ...

Not all of us have this facility. I use a Mac. Does GSAK exist for Mac yet? It didn't used to.

 

 

Try Project-GC. It is platform independent (web based), has scads of functionality, routinely updated in useful ways, and run by folks who value and respond to end-user input.

But it does not (at least as presented to my screen) show PMO caches a glance.

 

It shows PMO caches for me. For the record I am PM on Geocaching.com, and basic on Project-GC.

[+hzoi]

Thank goodness for GSAK ...

Not all of us have this facility. I use a Mac. Does GSAK exist for Mac yet? It didn't used to.

 

 

Try Project-GC. It is platform independent (web based), has scads of functionality, routinely updated in useful ways, and run by folks who value and respond to end-user input.

But it does not (at least as presented to my screen) show PMO caches a glance.

 

It shows PMO caches for me. For the record I am PM on Geocaching.com, and basic on Project-GC.

 

Michaelcycle, do you mean that the project-gc map doesn't differentiate whether or not it's a PMO cache? If so, yes, that's correct, their map doesn't differentiate.

[+MartyBartfast]

Thank goodness for GSAK ...

Not all of us have this facility. I use a Mac. Does GSAK exist for Mac yet? It didn't used to.

 

 

Try Project-GC. It is platform independent (web based), has scads of functionality, routinely updated in useful ways, and run by folks who value and respond to end-user input.

But it does not (at least as presented to my screen) show PMO caches a glance.

 

It shows PMO caches for me. For the record I am PM on Geocaching.com, and basic on Project-GC.

 

Michaelcycle, do you mean that the project-gc map doesn't differentiate whether or not it's a PMO cache? If so, yes, that's correct, their map doesn't differentiate.

 

Ah I think I misunderstood what Michaelcycle was saying.....

[+lee737]

More changes - at least now I can tell the difference at the 1 and 2km zooms..... green seems a lighter shade now, not so much though at lower zooms (wider fields)

[+Michaelcycle]

Thank goodness for GSAK ...

Not all of us have this facility. I use a Mac. Does GSAK exist for Mac yet? It didn't used to.

 

 

Try Project-GC. It is platform independent (web based), has scads of functionality, routinely updated in useful ways, and run by folks who value and respond to end-user input.

But it does not (at least as presented to my screen) show PMO caches a glance.

 

It shows PMO caches for me. For the record I am PM on Geocaching.com, and basic on Project-GC.

 

Michaelcycle, do you mean that the project-gc map doesn't differentiate whether or not it's a PMO cache? If so, yes, that's correct, their map doesn't differentiate.

 

Ah I think I misunderstood what Michaelcycle was saying.....

And Groundspeak's "fix" for the colorblind does not address the issue.

[+!Lux]

The new icons are terrible. When i first noticed it i though something was wrong or bugged or maybe i changed settings somehow, but nopes, they were real.

The colors are really bland and saturated, the white border is really annoying and they blend into the map so much it gets distracting. They are all circles so its harder to differentiate everything.

Everything about the new icons feels off and cheap.

[Stompy]

At the very least, the filter icons in the sidebar should be greyed out at the zoom levels where they don't apply.

After doing some more testing, I now retract this portion of my post. The filters now work at all zoom levels, which is a significant improvement over the previous version.

 

No, the filters stop working at 3km level.

[+The A-Team]

At the very least, the filter icons in the sidebar should be greyed out at the zoom levels where they don't apply.

After doing some more testing, I now retract this portion of my post. The filters now work at all zoom levels, which is a significant improvement over the previous version.

No, the filters stop working at 3km level.

I should have been more specific.

 

While the find/hide filters are limited to zoom 12 and above, the cache type filters can be turned on and off at all zoom levels. Try zooming out to zoom level 2 and turning off the Traditional type filter. Previously, the cache type filters could only be toggled at the higher zoom levels.

[+DragonsWest]

The new icons are terrible. When i first noticed it i though something was wrong or bugged or maybe i changed settings somehow, but nopes, they were real.

The colors are really bland and saturated, the white border is really annoying and they blend into the map so much it gets distracting. They are all circles so its harder to differentiate everything.

Everything about the new icons feels off and cheap.

 

I find myself longing for the old view as the new ones look terrible, but it looks like they are here to stay. Conformity rules over functionality, once again.

[+nannibella]

I am a software developer. I have been for over 30 years. I have only met two or three other developers who believed it was important to learn the fundamentals of good interface design. I never heard a single user interface complaint about the work of those who took it seriously. The rest created mediocre to terrible user interfaces.

 

One of the vital rules about interface design is:

 

Never, ever rely on color to convey information.

[+nannibella]

Thank you.

 

I am NOT a software developer, but only a simple, humble user who has to eat what the infallible (and probably well paid) "experts" decide to cook for her.

 

But this rule came to my mind the first time I had to look at these new icons on the map.

 

Why doesn´t anybody (of the expert cooks) seem to notice it?

 

There is this tale of Hans Christian Andersen about the emperor and his new clothes where finally a child cries out "But he isn't wearing anything at all!"