2011/8/17 - New Release (3.6)

[Chris Broadfoot]

Hi all,

We recently released a new minor version of the Maps API. This means that shortly, the versions of the Maps API will be:

3.6: Development/Nightly

3.5: Feature Stable

3.4: Frozen

3.3 will continue to exist for a short period of time, after which you will receive 3.4 when requesting 3.3.

----

In this release, we have added clickable business icons to the road map. This provides a consistent user experience between the Google Maps and the Maps API.

Another popular feature request was the ability to style hybrid and terrain map types. This is now possible via the "styles" option on MapOptions. When specifying styles in this way, they will be applied across all the default map types. This also makes it easier to create styled maps (no need to create a StyledMapType).

For more detail on these two new features, see the blog post here:

http://googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.com/2011/08/business-icons-and-styling-across.html

----

As noted previously, we recommend production applications specify a minor version (e.g. 3.4, 3.5). Though, please take the time to test your application against the nightly version (3.6) so that we can rectify any issues that may surface during your testing.

To see more information about versioning of the Maps API, see documentation:

http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/basics.html#Versioning

The full changelog for the Maps API can be found here:

http://code.google.com/p/gmaps-api-issues/wiki/JavascriptMapsAPIv3Changelog

Cheers,

Chris

--

http://twitter.com/broady

[sgiddings]

Hi Chris,

Just been looking at this to be able to disable clicking on google
located pois.
Use the Styled Map Wizard to generate the required code and came
across a problem.

When turning off all visibility of airports ... they are still
displayed, labelled and clickable.
Here is the, generated, code :
{ featureType: "transit.station.airport", stylers: [ { visibility:
"off" }]}
I even tried :
{ featureType: "transit.station.airport", elementType: "labels",
stylers: [ { visibility: "off" }]}


Do I need to log a bug ?

On Aug 17, 3:53 am, Chris Broadfoot <c...@google.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> We recently released a new minor version of the Maps API. This means that
> shortly, the versions of the Maps API will be:
> 3.6: Development/Nightly
> 3.5: Feature Stable
> 3.4: Frozen
> 3.3 will continue to exist for a short period of time, after which you will
> receive 3.4 when requesting 3.3.
>
> ----
>
> In this release, we have added clickable business icons to the road map.
> This provides a consistent user experience between the Google Maps and the
> Maps API.
>
> Another popular feature request was the ability to style hybrid and terrain
> map types. This is now possible via the "styles" option on MapOptions. When
> specifying styles in this way, they will be applied across all the default
> map types. This also makes it easier to create styled maps (no need to
> create a StyledMapType).
>

> For more detail on these two new features, see the blog post here:http://googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.com/2011/08/business-icons-and-st...

>
> ----
>
> As noted previously, we recommend production applications specify a minor
> version (e.g. 3.4, 3.5). Though, please take the time to test your
> application against the nightly version (3.6) so that we can rectify any
> issues that may surface during your testing.
>

> To see more information about versioning of the Maps API, see documentation:http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/basics.html...
>
> The full changelog for the Maps API can be found here:http://code.google.com/p/gmaps-api-issues/wiki/JavascriptMapsAPIv3Cha...
>
> Cheers,
> Chris
>
> --http://twitter.com/broady

[sgiddings]

One further piece of information -
I have not requested the places library at all !

[Chris Broadfoot]

Are you able to make a quick demo page? Or tell me which airport you are looking at.

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[en4ce]

i am a bit disappointed, the last version was released like 1 month
ago we "just" see what we had within the places api anyway? what?
sorry, but was this really so impotent?

i just wonder, where is earth, where is the youtube / wiki layer,
where is the webcam layer ?

:S

btw, this clickable icons are really not consistent if you cant style
the infowindow, the infowindows look like google, but our info windows
don't ... (same thing with panoramio anyway), of cause i can set this
function off but where is the point....

--enrico

[sgiddings]

Hi Chris,

Sorry, but had to lock my web site to version 3.5 to avoid the
problem.

However, the airport in question is :
- Aéroport de Dinard Pleurtuit Saint-Malo (DNR), 35730 Pleurtuit,
France
whose coordonates are
Lat : 48.58776739755567
Lng : -2.0796951962890944

Hope this helps with your investigations
Simon

On Aug 17, 11:02 am, Chris Broadfoot <c...@google.com> wrote:
> Are you able to make a quick demo page? Or tell me which airport you are
> looking at.
>

> --http://twitter.com/broady

[Chris Broadfoot]

Hi Simon,

Thanks! I was able to reproduce.

It turns out that particular airport is comprised of two geometries - the runways are a "transit.station.airport", but the general area is a "poi" (unfortunately the most specific category).

So, to disable the clickable icon, you'd need a style like

{

  featureType: "poi",

  elementType: "labels",

  stylers: [ { visibility: "off" } ]

}

(you could turn all the other poi categories back on, though)

It does seem wrong that there is a geometry (and label) only selectable under a vague category, I will follow up on this.

Hope this helps,

Chris

--

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[Chris Broadfoot]

On Wed, Aug 17, 2011 at 9:37 PM, en4ce <dje...@googlemail.com> wrote:

btw, this clickable icons are really not consistent if you cant style

the infowindow, the infowindows look like google, but our info windows
don't ... (same thing with panoramio anyway), of cause i can set this
function off but where is the point....

Could you file a feature request, please?

Also, can you elaborate whether you'd like to use a custom overlay to display the business information (like InfoBubble), or whether you want to style the *content* of the InfoWindow?

Thanks

Chris

[Gary Little]

What are the criteria for determining which clickable business icons
are shown on the base map? In the downtown core of my town, only two
businesses are shown (both are pharmacies); there are no restaurants,
banks, grocery stories, coffee shops, etc. Not very useful.

Gary

On Aug 16, 6:53 pm, Chris Broadfoot <c...@google.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> We recently released a new minor version of the Maps API. This means that
> shortly, the versions of the Maps API will be:
> 3.6: Development/Nightly
> 3.5: Feature Stable
> 3.4: Frozen
> 3.3 will continue to exist for a short period of time, after which you will
> receive 3.4 when requesting 3.3.
>
> ----
>
> In this release, we have added clickable business icons to the road map.
> This provides a consistent user experience between the Google Maps and the
> Maps API.
>
> Another popular feature request was the ability to style hybrid and terrain
> map types. This is now possible via the "styles" option on MapOptions. When
> specifying styles in this way, they will be applied across all the default
> map types. This also makes it easier to create styled maps (no need to
> create a StyledMapType).
>

> For more detail on these two new features, see the blog post here:http://googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.com/2011/08/business-icons-and-st...

>
> ----
>
> As noted previously, we recommend production applications specify a minor
> version (e.g. 3.4, 3.5). Though, please take the time to test your
> application against the nightly version (3.6) so that we can rectify any
> issues that may surface during your testing.
>

> To see more information about versioning of the Maps API, see documentation:http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/basics.html...
>
> The full changelog for the Maps API can be found here:http://code.google.com/p/gmaps-api-issues/wiki/JavascriptMapsAPIv3Cha...
>
> Cheers,
> Chris
>
> --http://twitter.com/broady

[Gary Little]

... after some experimentation I've found that even after setting the
visibility of poi.business labels to "off" I am seeing some clickable
business icons. Setting it to "on" or "simplified" gives the more or
less expected results. So perhaps the poi.business labels are still
"off" by default in 3.6 and I'm seeing some clickable business icons
because of a bug or ???

[en4ce]

http://code.google.com/p/gmaps-api-issues/issues/detail?id=3560

On 18 Aug., 01:33, Chris Broadfoot <c...@google.com> wrote:

[Chris Broadfoot]

Hi Gary,

Can you provide a link to a map that demonstrates this? Or just a latlng/zoom level so I can try it myself.

Chris

--

http://twitter.com/broady

[Joseph Elfelt]

Just like Chris said, it looks like 3.3 is now gone and if your app
requests 3.3 what you get is 3.4

[Lorenzo]

Hi,

is there any possibilltiy to make POIs visible but not clickable?

Thanks

Lorenzo

[Achintha Kuruwita]

Hi Chris,

With the latest update we are experiencing an issue with Markers, The gif type markers stop animating on some web browsers such as Google Chrome(13.0.782.112 m Windows), Firefox(6 Windows).

This was OK with version 3.3 but not with 3.4, any workaround for this issue?

Thanks

Achintha K

[Enoch Lau (Google Employee)]

http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/reference.html#MapOptions

Set 'optimized' to false.

[Achintha Kuruwita]

Thanks - it do the trick

[Chris Broadfoot]

Unfortunately not Lorenzo. You'll need to apply a map style to hide poi labels:

[ { featureType: "poi", elementType: "labels", stylers: [ { visibility: "off" } ] } ]

(or to just hide business pois, "poi.business")

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[Chris Broadfoot]

On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 11:56 AM, Enoch Lau (Google Employee) <enoc...@google.com> wrote:

http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/reference.html#MarkerOptions

Fixed link (MarkerOptions, not MapOptions)

 

Set 'optimized' to false.

Cheers

Chris

--

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[geoco...@gmail.com]

On Aug 16, 6:53 pm, Chris Broadfoot <c...@google.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> We recently released a new minor version of the Maps API. This means that
> shortly, the versions of the Maps API will be:
> 3.6: Development/Nightly
> 3.5: Feature Stable
> 3.4: Frozen
> 3.3 will continue to exist for a short period of time, after which you will
> receive 3.4 when requesting 3.3.
>

The documentation has not been updated to reflect this yet:
http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/basics.html#Versioning

-- Larry

> ----
>
> In this release, we have added clickable business icons to the road map.
> This provides a consistent user experience between the Google Maps and the
> Maps API.
>
> Another popular feature request was the ability to style hybrid and terrain
> map types. This is now possible via the "styles" option on MapOptions. When
> specifying styles in this way, they will be applied across all the default
> map types. This also makes it easier to create styled maps (no need to
> create a StyledMapType).
>

> For more detail on these two new features, see the blog post here:http://googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.com/2011/08/business-icons-and-st...

>
> ----
>
> As noted previously, we recommend production applications specify a minor
> version (e.g. 3.4, 3.5). Though, please take the time to test your
> application against the nightly version (3.6) so that we can rectify any
> issues that may surface during your testing.
>

> To see more information about versioning of the Maps API, see documentation:http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/basics.html...

[Gary Little]

Chris,

The behaviour seems to have changed in the past day or so. I'm now
seeing the full complement of business icons by default.

Gary

On Aug 21, 6:43 pm, Chris Broadfoot <c...@google.com> wrote:
> Hi Gary,
>
> Can you provide a link to a map that demonstrates this? Or just a
> latlng/zoom level so I can try it myself.
>
> Chris
>

> --http://twitter.com/broady

[Robert Aspinall]

This broke markers on two of our applications as well.  If Google is going to constantly change the API, can it please do it in a way that ensures compatibility?  The marker optimization is nice and all, but enabling, by default, a feature known to break marker rendering in IE?  This is troubling.  We can do without marker optimization, but we can't have our markers rendering incorrectly.  Features like this should be disabled by default if they cause problems.

Lately, it feels like if we don't watch the API like a hawk, it will break our applications (we were requesting 3.3 and started receiving 3.4).

[Ben Appleton]

You have 6 months in which to check your site against upcoming changes:

http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/basics.html#Versioning

You have a simple workaround - set optimized: false

http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/reference.html#MarkerOptions

Relatively few developers have needed to disable optimization. What broke?

- Ben

On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 12:55 AM, Robert Aspinall <rasp...@gmail.com> wrote:

This broke markers on two of our applications as well.  If Google is going to constantly change the API, can it please do it in a way that ensures compatibility?  The marker optimization is nice and all, but enabling, by default, a feature known to break marker rendering in IE?  This is troubling.  We can do without marker optimization, but we can't have our markers rendering incorrectly.  Features like this should be disabled by default if they cause problems.

Lately, it feels like if we don't watch the API like a hawk, it will break our applications (we were requesting 3.3 and started receiving 3.4).

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[Nathan Raley]

On our application without the optimization set to false the markers flicker with each update and is rather annoying, granted the fix is relatively simple.  Without the optimization set to false and you are updating the position of several markers in quick succession, you can sometimes barely observe some of the markers as there appears to be more flicker than marker.

Not sure about what broke on Robert's.

[Andreas Mayr]

I've recognized the same problem. Either 3.6 is already feature stable
and this information wasn't published, or there's some bug in the
Google loader - or the 3.6 was marked internally as stable and isn't
so... Because if I tell the Google Loader to load version 3, I get
3.6.1.

By the way, I had one problem with 3.6: today I was surprised, that in
IE9 the street names were far too small to read because formerly it
worked well in all browsers. I then started playing around with
loading different API versions and 3.4 as well as 3.5 worked
perfectly. After that, I was tryting 3.6 a last time - and suddenly it
worked also perfectly. So at the end, I didn't change anything of my
original code. Have anyone of you noticed a similar (strange)
behaviour???




On 23 Aug., 19:17, "geocode...@gmail.com" <geocode...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Aug 16, 6:53 pm, Chris Broadfoot <c...@google.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi all,
>
> > We recently released a new minor version of the Maps API. This means that
> > shortly, the versions of the Maps API will be:
> > 3.6: Development/Nightly
> > 3.5: Feature Stable
> > 3.4: Frozen
> > 3.3 will continue to exist for a short period of time, after which you will
> > receive 3.4 when requesting 3.3.
>

> The documentation has not been updated to reflect this yet:http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/basics.html...

[geoco...@gmail.com]

http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/basics.html#Versioning

The documentation is now correct.

+ Documentation will always reflect the nightly (development) version.
However, for each
+ version, we will offer a separately maintained reference.
+
+ * Nightly Version (3.6) Reference (Current)
+ * Release Version (3.5) Reference (Feature-Stable)
+ * Release Version (3.4) Reference (Frozen)
+ * Versions 3.0 to 3.3 have been retired.

v3.6 is the nightly (development) version, not recommended for
"released" maps, only for development use and verifying your map is
future proof.

[Robert Aspinall]

Map markers in Internet Explorer broke.  I've attached a picture.  It happens for the standard map markers too.  How would we have known to check for this in future versions?  This is not the sort of thing you'd expect to break between versions, when it's been functioning fine for years (both under API v2 and v3).

[Andres Ferrate]

Robert,

Can you provide a link to your map?

Thanks,

Andres

On Tue, Aug 30, 2011 at 10:56 AM, Robert Aspinall <rasp...@gmail.com> wrote:

Map markers in Internet Explorer broke.  I've attached a picture.  It happens for the standard map markers too.  How would we have known to check for this in future versions?  This is not the sort of thing you'd expect to break between versions, when it's been functioning fine for years (both under API v2 and v3).

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[Barry Hunter]

Try setting optimized to false in the marker options

http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/reference.html#MarkerOptions

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[Robert Aspinall]

http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/tsunami, although it's been changed to set optimized to false, because of the marker rendering error.

[Enoch Lau (Google Employee)]

Would it be possible for you to create a sample test page with some markers that illustrates the problem please? Thanks.

Enoch

[Robert Aspinall]

Sure.  http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/tsunami/index_markerproblem.html

The only change I made was to remove the optimized: false parameters from any marker creation code.

[Robert Aspinall]

Keep in mind this problem only manifests in IE.

[Ben Appleton]

The problem manifests in IE7/8, in which markers are rendered as images. The IE debugger claims that http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/tsunami/style.css has set a margin of 10px on all images, which causes the strange rendering that you observe.

I suggest using a class to style your images. That avoids your page's styling affecting the Maps API's rendering.

Cheers

Ben

On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 1:43 PM, Robert Aspinall <rasp...@gmail.com> wrote:

Keep in mind this problem only manifests in IE.

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[Robert Aspinall]

Thanks, and we'll do that, but why did this occur between 3.3 and 3.4?

The frustration we feel is that we have many applications out there using this API, under an enterprise license.  It would be nice if we could keep receiving a specific version when requesting it, instead of being inevitably "upgraded" as versions expire. 

[Ben Appleton]

In version 3.4 on March 2nd we released Canvas markers:

http://code.google.com/p/gmaps-api-issues/wiki/JavascriptMapsAPIv3Changelog
Canvas supports about 10 times more markers than the non-optimized markers, addressing a long-standing complaint that our old markers were very slow.

Unfortunately we can't keep old API versions around forever because the private HTTP interfaces used by Google Maps API change over time. Instead we support 3 versions in parallel, so that sites can test and upgrade on their own timetable.

- Ben

On Sat, Sep 3, 2011 at 12:35 AM, Robert Aspinall <rasp...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks, and we'll do that, but why did this occur between 3.3 and 3.4?

The frustration we feel is that we have many applications out there using this API, under an enterprise license.  It would be nice if we could keep receiving a specific version when requesting it, instead of being inevitably "upgraded" as versions expire. 

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