Announcing New Features & Enhancements?!

[mom...@gmail.com]

So while more communication and transparency around the topics on issue tracker is being discussed here, i would like to point out that new features are being rolled out to Map Maker and we are only accidentally discovering them!

That is sad.

How about an announcement or a page which keeps getting updated with all the minor changes and enhancements being introduced, an active change log?

This is what i have seen new so far (old or new features, i have no clue when they were introduced, i speak from personal experience)

1. Turn restrictions on roads have had options of incorporating ROAD SIGNS for a while now.

2. When editing roads and polygons; nodes which have a blue outline can be deleted as opposed to nodes with a black outline which can't be (for roads). Older way of figuring out which nodes can and cant not be deletes was if a mouseover 'hand' icon appeared over a node, it could be deleted.

3. New Road 'Segment Usage' categories: Unmarked Road Crossing, Marked Road Crossing/Zebra Crossing, Access Path, Enclosed traffic area, Walkway, Access Path, Trail, Major Pedestrian Mall, Minor Pedestrian Mall in addition to the earlier categories which had to do strictly with Roads, attributes like Roundabout, or entrance and exit ramps.
New map view rendering for features marked as such has been introduced too.

4. New Category: Sub Premise

5. Road Surface Type has new attribute associated rendering too (Faraz highlighted this i think for unpaved road)

There must be tons of other stuff. It has to be announced or written about at some place so mappers will start using the improved features. A lot of these features are manifestations of mappers requests on the issue tracker or elsewhere and a pity that many will never get to know that these features now address their concerns.

?????

[sabre23t]

On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 1:33 PM, <mom...@gmail.com> wrote:

3. New Road 'Segment Usage' categories: Unmarked Road Crossing, Marked Road Crossing/Zebra Crossing, Access Path, Enclosed traffic area, Walkway, Access Path, Trail, Major Pedestrian Mall, Minor Pedestrian Mall in addition to the earlier categories which had to do strictly with Roads, attributes like Roundabout, or entrance and exit ramps.

Agree with you this need a writeup; replacing or in addition to the current http://maps.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=156967 "Roads and Transportation" section "Drawing a Bicycle Path or Pedestrian Walkway".

This "Walkway" vs "Minor Pedestrian Mall" segment usage bit me. I didn't notice the latter when I drew a "Non Traffic" priority road. I used the former, and got my edit queried by a moderator. I guess the writeup should include something like these ...

* Walkway - for non-traffic road of small dimension 1m wide or so.
* Major Pedestrian Mall - for non-traffic road of big dimension 2m or wider, joining to main roads/public transport.
* Minor Pedestrian Mall - for non-traffic road of big dimension 2m or wider, joining to Major Pedestrian Malls together or to small roads.

regards,
sabre23t =^.^=

[lasni...@google.com]

Sabre23t, Momers, I think you raise good points, and I believe the whole team plans to be more active in posting updates/announcements in our Announcements forum :).

Thanks for the friendly poke!

[rjhintz]

The usual way to handle this would be, as Momers suggests, an ongoing,
dated change log showing enhancements and fixes. Also, some
application notes for significant changes would be helpful, such as
when to use "unpaved" road instead of dirt/gravel/etc.
--
Rich

[rjhintz]

I added an issue, 1011, to have a formal changelog for user facing changes.  Rather than search through multiple threads in the forums or depending Google to remember to post notice of an update, I'd rather see a more formal changelog.  This is kinda basic and probably exists as part of the software update workflow anyway.  We just need a (possibly) sanitized one for user review.

--

Rich

[twist3r]

I'll double that.
Link to issue : http://code.google.com/p/google-mapmaker/issues/detail?id=1011