Fedya wrote:It's not just that, Bantari. There's something different about the route planner and the map that it presented for the route, that I can't quite put my finger on.
Oh really? Yeah, I can see where this can mess things up. It was not apparent from the article Uberdude linked. It is weird they make such changes then... if it worked, why break it. I see Apple doing that a lot lately as well.
- Bantari
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WARNING: This post might contain Opinions!!
Bantari, several years ago Google maps used the standard road colours for the country the road was in, so British motorways were blue, French autoroutes red with a yellow stripe and German autobahns red (iirc). So if you viewed a trans-national map the colours would switch. I can appreciate an inelegance to this, and also people navigating in foreign lands might not understand the colours (though I expect the vast majority of use of Google maps is not foreign). Google switched a few years back to the same colour scheme for all countries (perhaps based on US standards or their own). Another approach would be to use the standard colours of the user's home country for all countries to avoid the foreign unfamiliarity mentioned above. But rather than giving the user choice from these various options all with pros and cons, they picked one and forced it on users.
But whilst the above is simply another case of Google picking one of several reasonable choices rather than allowing the user to choose, making many classes of road which were formerly differentiated by colour now all indistinguishable white is simply a dumb step backwards. A white road could be a wide single carriageway with streetlights suitable for 70mph driving or an untarmaced country dirt track where meeting another vehicle means reversing serval miles. And for what gain? It looks cleaner? A blank piece of paper is very clean but doesn't make a good map.
Uberdude wrote:... A blank piece of paper is very clean but doesn't make a good map.
In 'The Hunting of the Snark', Lewis Carroll wrote:The Bellman himself they all praised to the skies-- Such a carriage, such ease and such grace! Such solemnity, too! One could see he was wise, The moment one looked in his face!
He had bought a large map representing the sea, Without the least vestige of land: And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be A map they could all understand.
"What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and Equators, Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?" So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply "They are merely conventional signs!
"Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes! But we've got our brave Captain to thank: (So the crew would protest) "that he's bought us the best-- A perfect and absolute blank!"
