First, I am embarrased to be posting an IE problem - I am sorry.  But I
swear there is no reason for my map to be acting the way it is.  I'm
linking to the whole script - it is well commented.  The problem I am
having is that IE is taking forever to render all the markers on the
map.  The eventually do, but it takes minutes.

Site: http://www.onnyturf.com/subwaymap1.4.php

If nothing seems to happen at first, go away for a few minutes and then
come back, there will be hundreds of blue dots as there should be.

My running guess is that this is related to addOverlays, or maybe
this.reOrderOverlays(); inside addOverlays???

I figure this because the map seems to go through processing the XML
and adding the markers to the list of markers fine...there is a
statement on the site that appears when this is done "Station Data
Loaded", which is called from in my version of addOverlays.  but the
markers still have yet to be drawn...thats why I think its hanging on
reOrderOverlays();

Also, this problem is new from sometime in the past ten days or
so....not sure, but it is new.

The code in question is here:
http://www.onnyturf.com/google/loadjs_v1.4.js

of course all is good in the Fox.

Thanks

AB,

For some odd reason, when your map loads (Mozilla on a Mac) it looks
fine but several seconds later, all the little icon marks turn into
much bigger circles, probably 20px or more in diameter. They look fuzzy
and are an aqua sort of color, like a swimming pool that hasn't had
anything added to it but dirty children for a hot summer month.

-John

http://maps.huge.info

yeah its ok!  Note the version number - this is just a test version -
the blue dots are to make it easy to see what is going on.  The code is
also striped down on this version to make trouble shooting easier!

The real deal is still at: http://www.onnyturf.com/subwaymap.php

Thanks for looking!

FYI also - Usually the markers are transparent. The station dots are
actually illustrated right on the map tiles.

One thing that you're doing that's different from what most people have
tried is that you're using GIF files for your markers.

Perhaps the Google code is trying to do something clever in IE that only
works with PNG files (which wouldn't be necessary in other browsers that
have better PNG partial transparency handling) and might be thereby
raising and eventually successfully handling lots of exceptions.

I don't see anything wrong with it but give my new tool print_r a crack
at it

You could break in your loop and do object.print_r('object') and view
the object itself.
it is not as useful in IE because you have to scroll down all the time
but it should help you fix this problem.

see
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/Google-Maps-API/browse_thread/thr...

it's certainly not a GIF problem only; my map is using a very simple
method of showing a "loading" message, as well as PNGs, but the
"loading" message disappears LONG before the markers are actually fully
loaded.

in fact, it seems that the "loading" message disappears once the
markers START to show up on the map. while I'm more concerned about
getting the "loading" message to stay there until all the markers are
loaded, I'm still bothered by how long IE takes to load (given the
addOverlays function).

yep - its not the gifs - I just replaced them with a all solid 24
png...and still stalls.

you can see in the script that the load message gets changed after the
addOverlays function is called...it is the last part of that function.
but it might be that reOrderOverlays is still chugging along.in the
background.

kwesi I am looking at your script now.

Maybe I should just build this again from the ground up...nobody else
is having a problem with addOverlays I guess?

so I stripped that icon issue out of there, just using Google's default
- no change.

Well that was wierd!  I stripped out the custom map type and poof -
fast load time!  I wonder what that is all about?

echm...uh...Solved.  Sorry for the bother. :)

Looks like up top I had left in a var from an experiment a long time
ago, and it was throwing IE off.

this line:
var i=0

I solved it by looking at some other sites using addOverlays and
figured it had to be something extra, so I just kept wittling away at
all extra code.

thanks kwesi and Mike and maps.huge and kalin for your time.  Sorry it
was such a stupid error.

hmm, have you tried refreshing the screen (using the toolbar refresh
button) in IE on your site after it first loads?

It crawls on the reload...at least on my IE 6.0.

Are you seeing the same?

Thanks Puffin -

im making a lot of changes to the 1.4 verion right now. I am still
having issues.  I got it loading fast when using the default icon, but
when I add a custom icon now it is dragging on a new load.  I am
closing the browser down and launching fresh with each step.

God, I hate IE
God - "I hate it too"

Still struggling!

I must not be understanding something - when I use google's defaut icon
I have no problem, the map loads fast in IE.  When I use my own custom
icon it chokes in IE, but works in Firefox.

Demo:
1. custom icon version: http://www.onnyturf.com/subwaymap1.4.php
1. custom icon version js:
http://www.onnyturf.com/google/loadjs_v1.4.js

2. fast loading default icon version:
http://www.onnyturf.com/subwaymap1.5.php
2. fast loading default icon version js:
http://www.onnyturf.com/google/loadjs_v1.5.js

In the second version i delete the custom icon var and I remove the
reference to it in the marker creation process.

Anyone have an example of a map with a couple hundre markers drawing
with custom icons to compare this to?

AB,

I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that each icon has to
be loaded as a separate server request for each marker. While strange
and seemingly wasteful, it's doing that. I saw in your code (or one
example of it) that you are using the google shadow image, which speeds
things up. If you have access to another server, try putting your icons
on it, or spread them out to several servers and see if that makes any
difference.

I noticed that IE also sometimes calls for a null request from the
server, which might cause other problems.

What do you think?

-John

http://maps.huge.info

hmmm....I really dont know much about it.  I can try moving the image
to another domain, which I guess IE would think is another server.  But
that seems completely rediculous.  It also seem kind of rediculous that
IE would not cache the image and then just reference that, instead of
re-downloading the same thing each time.

I'll give it a shot.

Nope - no difference.  Could it be the image type - that seems
rediculous too!

You know - the crazy thing is the site was working just fine a week
ago.  I swear.

damn it! the custom icon also kills the click Listener.

a couple of crazy Ideas for you....

1) get rid of the transparent property on your icon or add an imageMap
property this may be causing probs..

2) try caching the image when the page loads with the little known
Image Object

like so
var myicon = new Image(pixelWidth, pixelHeight);
myicon.src = 'somepicture.png';
 thats it the browser will download the picture in the background and
when IE goes to render the markers it will already be there..

worth a shot....

I'll try the caching! thanks!  I thought the transparent property was
explicitly FOR IE....it creates the hit area, as i guess IE does not
recognize the imageMap....from the documentation of the GIcon class:

transparent
The URL of a virtually transparent version of the foreground icon image
used to capture IE click events. This image should be a 24-bit PNG
version of the main icon image with 1% opacity, but the same shape and
size as the main icon.

ok - mine isn't the same size and shape, but it is 1% opacity.  I
wouldn't think that would damage the load...ugh - guess I have to go
check this.

imageMap
An array of integers representing the x/y coordinates of the image map
we should use to specify the clickable part of the icon image in non-IE
browsers.

so, not for IE.

Just a wild idea, but you might try not defining staticon.transparent.

The .transparent is only used in IE, so it won't affect Firefox etc.,
they use .imageMap instead (which you don't define, so by not defining
either of them you won't lose any functionality in IE that you've got in
FF).

IE might possibly not like the fact that it's currently not the same
size as staticon.image.

now i have this in 1.4 which does not seem to be exactly right:

var myicon = new Image(20, 34);
myicon.src = 'google/images/org_none.png';

      // Create transparent marker icon that overlays the stations
      var staticon = new GIcon();
      staticon.image = myicon;
      staticon.shadow = "http://www.google.com/mapfiles/shadow50.png";
      staticon.iconSize = new GSize(20, 20);
      staticon.shadowSize = new GSize(20, 20);
      staticon.iconAnchor = new GPoint(10, 10);
      staticon.infoWindowAnchor = new GPoint(10, 10);
      staticon.transparent = "google/images/target.png";

you don't need staticon.image = myicon;

switch it back to staticon.image = 'google/images/org_none.png';

the image object does not render
it only cache's the image for later inclusion in an img tag
it is not an instance of the img tag.

then you should be good.

you may also want to cache the transparent icon and the shadow icon

I killed the transparent reference which definately helps keep IE from
freezing up during load.  But the icons still crawl in.  I have the
caching set up like so now, per kwesi, but it does not seem to make a
difference.

var StatIcon = new Image (20, 20);
StatIcon.src = "http://www.onnyturf.com/google/images/checkicon.gif";

      // Create transparent marker icon that overlays the stations
      var staticon = new GIcon();
      staticon.image =
"http://www.onnyturf.com/google/images/checkicon.gif";

all of this would be good enough for now, but when I throw in a
tranparent gif as the icon, which I need...my markers are really
transparent hit areas....when I use a 100% transparent gif IE losses
the clickability and it chokes on a 1% png...do I need to define an
imageMap, woudl that give me a transparent hit area in IE?

thanks for the help BTW!

anyone know if this is a documented bug, its starting to seem like one.

why should google's icon load that much faster - like 10 seconds
faster? especially when there is no difference in the Fox.