I hate it when my browser crashes, but even though the crash happened around the time I closed the Yahoo! tab, I’ll give Yahoo! the benefit of the doubt. Besides: no website, no matter what, should be able to crash a browser. If the browser does crash, it should ultimately be the browser’s (engine’s) fault. Sloppy writing. Inexcusable, especially when more and more web services come about that assume you have your browser running all the time.
Fortunately, I haven’t lost much information, although my previously written (and almost finished) blog post about the topic was lost…
…the topic, right. Via OK/Cancel: Yahoo! Maps Beta
[it] is Flash based – though there’s an AJAX version for API developers [..]
This is interesting, seeing as Flickr — another Yahoo! product, at least as of recently — moved from Flash to Ajax a while ago, if I recall correctly. I therefore assume that Yahoo! had legitimate reasons to use Flash in this case. Performance?
Speaking of performance, it doesn’t perform too great for me. Call me impatient, but neither Safari nor Firefox seem to properly let me navigate around the world on this. Maybe just a temporary glitch; maybe just a result of thousands of people trying the beta out.
Interestingly, from what I gathered in the map thumbnail, Yahoo! does seem to recognize (unlike Google) that there’s countries in Europe (beyond just the UK and Ireland) which have, you know, actual cities and infrastructure. No, Google Maps/Local is not in beta any more, so that’s not the excuse. I’m not sure what the hold-up is.
If Yahoo! can deliver reasonably accurate and comprehensive local information (pizza services! ATMs! Tim Horton’s! 
), works well in Safari and has actual map data for Germany as well, then it may just end up being a better choice for me.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: between Yahoo!, Google and MSN (or should I say, Windows Live?), competition finally seems to actually bring us forward again.
Update: John Gruber finds it “just plain terrific”, and TechCrunch reviews it. Now I’m getting really annoyed; seems I’m the only person who cannot use it.
Update 2: Now that I’m actually reading the review, it’s become even more interesting for me. They have multi-point directions (i.e., not just one “destination”, but several places in between), and, much more importantly, they 1) actually use the browser history, i.e. don’t break the back button 2) update the URL as well. No more need for a manual permalink link link, if you know what I mean.
Others' Thoughts
Comment on November 3rd, 2005 at 8:40 am
You mention performance, and suspect it’s the traffic, which makes me wonder whether it’s the download of new map data which is taking longer than you’d expect, or whether it’s local map interactions somehow…?
(Street-level mapping data is rarely global, and is often bound in local agreements.)
For “break the back button”, I’m never quite sure what people expect it to do when the browser holds an application… some think it should continue to navigate among documents, while others think the browser’s button should transform into some type of Undo system. It’s possible to create either one, but some user expectations seem thwarted either way…?
jd/mm
Comment on November 3rd, 2005 at 9:29 am
Does not work for me in Firefox. (Granted, I use FlashBlock, so appearantly it confuses FlashBlock because I don’t get the option to engage the Flash.) Works slow-ish in IE. I’ll take a closer look later.
Hmmmm, Yahoo seems to be improving in playing nice in the realm of the web. Now if they only made their front page validate.
Comment on November 3rd, 2005 at 2:52 pm
John,
I do realize the bottleneck could both be the CPU and the bandwidth.
Thing is: on the one hand, the browser’s status messages lead me to believe that it was downloading data, not processing it. Yet on the other hand, my internet connection’s monitor, MenuMeters, indicated that no data whatsoever was being downloaded or transmitted. As I am writing this, I have tried once again to zoom out, scroll over to Europe, and wait for map data to appear. It still hasn’t.
If it is the CPU busy rendering the data, the application needs to add more useful status messages. Confusingly enough, navigating for example in the Québec area seems to work perfectly fine, which may indicate that your suspicion:
is correct, i.e., the European map data servers are having trouble.
Comment on November 3rd, 2005 at 6:32 pm
oh! yes, I don’t think there’s any map data for Europe yet there, right? That would make a long wait….
… hmm, but I remember seeing some type of “sorry” messages when I went out of bounds of the current database earlier today… hmm, if you can describe to the Yahoo folks which steps to follow to get inadequate feedback info, then that might make the implementation better…?
Comment on November 3rd, 2005 at 6:57 pm
John,
if this is a case of missing map data, then there’s two problems to solve: 1) the thumbnail, as seen here (top right corner), suggests that at least the coastal parts of Europe and Northern Africa are available as map data 2) rather than greying out areas (which led me to believe they are merely not downloaded yet, rather than not available at all), there needs to be a less ambiguous means to inform the user that the map data is not available. For example, a pattern of “This map data is not currently available.” texts could be put on top of the grey, solid color.
I didn’t get any form of sorry message / error / alert / etc., neither on Safari nor on Firefox.
I will definitely contact Yahoo! about this problem later on.
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