

Our area - a simple one page tool for marking delivery areas, comments appreciated - nirmal
http://www.nirmalpatel.com/ourarea

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bouncingsoul
Neat idea. Could be useful for marking property sizes or lots for a housing
complex.

There's one big usability problem that I encountered: You start with one
marker (showing the address the user entered), but it isn't used in
calculating the area at all. It's especially confusing because the initial
directions bubble is coming from it, which for me implied that it was the
marking the first corner of my shape.

I think you should either not show the address marker, or (since it's
draggable) use it in calculating the area. I haven't used the Google Maps api
before, so I don't know how possible those suggestions are.

Double clicking markers zoomed the map in and didn't remove them.

On the directions:

I think you should move the last bullet point to a persistent place above the
iframe code. It shortens the directions and keeps the information available in
case the user forgets or skips them.

You should clarify the "toggle filling" option. I was expecting a color
change, not a fill or no fill. In fact, I would drop this option and just
default to fill.

So I'd reword the directions as:

    
    
      * Click the map to create markers. 
      * Drag markers around to define your area. 
      * Double click a marker to remove it.
    

Edit:

Thinking about the fill or no fill thing, I can see how it could help
differentiate between an _area_ and a _route._ But a route doesn't have to
connect. Maybe you could add the ability to make routes?

Edit 2:

It doesn't seem like you can specify markers exactly. What's the point of
using this instead of marking up a screenshot in Photoshop?

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nirmal
So I want the address marker to be there so you have a reference that you can
easily find.

Double clicking to remove works in Firefox and Safari for me. Which OS/browser
are you using?

Good tip on the iframe directions. Done.

~~~
bouncingsoul
Safari 3.1 on OS X. I tried it in Firefox and double click works there.

