

MapQuest Joins the 21st Century With a New Design - ssclafani
http://www.mapquest.com/

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Maciek416
The "360 view" (like Google's Street View) data for my city (Toronto) is
wildly out of date. Across the office where I work there is an entire
entertainment center complete with a 50 story condo on top -- which is
entirely missing (and still shows a parking lot with cars parked in it) on
MapQuest 360.

[edit: from the looks of some movie billboards at this intersection and a few
other hints, it looks like the data is from mid-2006].

[edit 2: I just checked my own neighborhood and the building I currently live
in, along with the neighboring building are both not yet built. Two condo
towers south of my building are still only half-way built. MapQuest Maps ==
Street View Wayback Machine?]

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saileshkrish
I checked my house and found that the 360 view is about 2.5 years old. I can
tell this pretty accurately because of a remodel we were doing at the time.

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mirkules
I just get a blank, white page. I would expect a 21st century design to
perhaps have a fallback in case JS is turned off, or even a simple "please
turn on Javascript" message.

Edit: Since I'm getting downvoted, I'll say this: I've always maintained that
sites need to gracefully handle the absence of javascript. In the past,
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1788856>), people have correctly pointed
out that not all startups have enough time and money to burn on handling a few
percent of the population that keep their JS off. But I still think a huge
site like MapQuest needs to be able to gracefully degrade, ESPECIALLY if it
wants to compete with Google and Bing maps.

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bartl
I agree with you. I use NoScript, I don't use Javascript on a site I've never
visited before. And MapQuest just showed... nothing. As if it was a horrible
server error (some PHP sites show a blank page when the PHP goes tits up).

If I wasn't interested to see what they were doing, I would have been gone by
now.

This is a horrible introduction to people who accidentally stumble onto the
site.

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owyn
No offense, but it's not a demographic worth catering to. It's not a malware
site, it's mapquest. Anyone who accidentally stumbles onto the site will have
javascript turned on.

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po
Doesn't have any of the streets by my place in Tokyo. Google's maps of the
area show every building and streets that are no wider than a foot path.

Confusingly, it also shows tons of streets as dead ends. Two dead ends will
almost meet when in fact the street continues right through. I wonder if they
generated these maps algorithmically.

Here's an example from an area just outside Shibuya:

<http://mapq.st/h/6-L75ReYU9>

(I do like the mapquest owned short links though)

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samratjp
If by the title meaning that MapQuest is just getting into 21st Century in
terms of design, then I agree. It's way too messy of a layout and the icons
feel too generic. Come on MapQuest, do less!

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Naomi
It's difficult to interpret this mapquest version of live traffic conditions.
They are showing the traffic on every tiny street all at the same time, not
just major roads and highways, so it's hard to see what's even on the map at
all. Google maps does a better job of leaving the smaller streets out of the
traffic image, and then displaying them only when you zoom in.

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grandalf
Mapquest's iphone app is excellent and provides free turn-by-turn navigation.
Highly recommended.

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wglb
Looks much nicer, but the satellite view and the 360 view are way out of sync.
The 360 view appears to be 3 years older than the view from above.

Without this fixed, it is not going to be much of a challenge to google.

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m0th87
Surprisingly pleasant. I'm a big fan of the hashmark URL updates. It's a
subtle feature but its necessity becomes glaringly obvious when trying to
share google maps results.

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treyp
i don't know how long they store those hashmark keys, but i have a feeling
that the lengthy google maps URLs would last longer

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vlad
Why are the controls on the far right, while the query entry is on the far
left?

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njn
Amazing how it still looks dated compared to Google Maps.

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aik
Though I'm finding it speedier than Google Maps in Chrome. It's a bit
refreshing.

