Google Maps versus iPAD issues

[Antoine Gilbert]

We have some customer Web projects targeting the iPAD (running on
Safari) and among other technologies using Google Maps API.

We ran into a serious problem about image management on Safari. This
one, in some situation, is not clearing images from memory causing a
memory leak that can be reach very quickly with some Web pages. Safari
on iPAD seem to allow 10MB of memory for images, meaning you can only
have 10MB (or so?) of images loaded at a time in a Web page. But the
problem with this is when your Web page is displaying new images over
and over during the life of the page, depending on how the new images
are coming to the page, Safari seems to not reallocate memory of the
old unused images. In that case, when the limit is reached, no more
images processing occurs, causing Web applications not working
properly.

There is some discussions about this specific problem there :
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2460899&start=15&tstart=0

This problem seems to occurs (well there is a problem and we think
it’s related) with Google Maps API (and maps.google.com) on iPAD
Safari. For example, when you go on maps.google.com with an iPAD, if
you navigate relatively quickly 30-50 times with many zoom level
changes, the map navigation will stop working properly (see old tiles
of previous view, empty tiles, etc.).

There are some workaround to this but basically, it seems to be a
browser flaw and it should be solved on the browser itself.

In our particular cases, the problem occurs in our own web stuff and
with Google Maps API. We can implements some workarounds on our side
but of course it’s useless if Google Maps still have the problem.

What we would like to know is if Google Maps techies are aware of the
problem and how they plan to manage this (do some workaround, put
pressure on Apple/Safari, etc.).

We have another related issue with Google Maps on iPAD Safari. While
new API versions are coming (and on maps.google.com too), the
smoothness of finger navigation on iPAD seems to vary a lot. For some
version it seem to be good, then next version is worse, next version
better, next is worse, etc. For example the last version on
maps.google.com is very slow and laggy about this. What you guys think
about that?

Antoine Gilbert
Korem inc.

[Daniel Strube]

@Finger navigation / zooming:

I can corroborate this, my embedded maps will have touch overlays set
correctly on the first load of the page - in which the pinch to zoom
will function correctly. After moving the viewport at all, it will
change the click / touch hotspots to be off center - or rather, they
will not center based on the location of the map relative to the
viewport.

The result is that the map is unusable.

Thank you.

On Nov 25, 9:57 am, Antoine Gilbert <antoine.gilbert...@gmail.com>
wrote:
>  We have some customer Web projects targeting theiPAD(running on

> Safari) and among other technologies using Google Maps API.
>
> We ran into a serious problem about image management on Safari. This
> one, in some situation, is not clearing images from memory causing a
> memory leak that can be reach very quickly with some Web pages. Safari

> oniPADseem to allow 10MB of memory for images, meaning you can only

> have 10MB (or so?) of images loaded at a time in a Web page. But the
> problem with this is when your Web page is displaying new images over
> and over during the life of the page, depending on how the new images
> are coming to the page, Safari seems to not reallocate memory of the
> old unused images. In that case, when the limit is reached, no more
> images processing occurs, causing Web applications not working
> properly.
>

> There is some discussions about this specific problem there :http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2460899&start=15&ts...

>
> This problem seems to occurs (well there is a problem and we think
> it’s related) with Google Maps API (and maps.google.com) oniPAD

> Safari. For example, when you go on maps.google.com with aniPAD, if

> you navigate relatively quickly 30-50 times with many zoom level
> changes, the map navigation will stop working properly (see old tiles
> of previous view, empty tiles, etc.).
>
> There are some workaround to this but basically, it seems to be a
> browser flaw and it should be solved on the browser itself.
>
> In our particular cases, the problem occurs in our own web stuff and
> with Google Maps API. We can implements some workarounds on our side
> but of course it’s useless if Google Maps still have the problem.
>
> What we would like to know is if Google Maps techies are aware of the
> problem and how they plan to manage this (do some workaround, put
> pressure on Apple/Safari, etc.).
>

> We have another related issue with Google Maps oniPADSafari. While

> new API versions are coming (and on maps.google.com too), the

> smoothness of finger navigation oniPADseems to vary a lot. For some