New Google Maps Engine SUCKS

[Nick]

Maybe I'm the only one, but I love me my google maps 'My Places'. I have hundreds and hundreds of maps in there and I use it all the time. So a month or two ago, they finally forced me to upgrade to the 'new and improved' Google Maps Engine. It looks kinda new and shiny but it's like they took everything useful about google maps and replaced it with a bunch of crap that I can't even begin to comprehend could be useful.

I used to be able to just draw a line and it would say how long it is. Now I can draw a line and make it all sorts of fancy colors on the fly, but no more distance? And no more importing GPS files, just CSV and XSLX?! I'm so confused and really wishing I could chalk this up to me being a dumbass. So anyone else run into this? Any workarounds? All my old maps are still in the old format so I've been going through and recycling junk ones but this can only last so long. What to do?! I hate you Google.

New (very sad) maps:


Old happy maps:

 

[Aldaron]

You know I've never been a fan of Google My Maps, but when I was trying to answer some of your UTM questions the other day I was messing with it again. I ran into the same problems with importing gpx files, but there was a link for creating a map with Classic Maps that let me import a gpx file. It wasn't listed as one of the acceptable formats, but it worked. It looks like you can also use that classic maps to measure the distance of a line.

As my best friend once told me when I was talking about how I liked one of Google's products, he said, "Yeah, it'll be great...until they abruptly decide to shut it down one day for no good reason."

 

[Aldaron]

And it looks like the new Google lite engine has something like a pro and a standard version that have other features.

 

[Howells Outdoors]

I'm with ya @Nick. I hate the new version. I've just clicked on the use the old Google maps or whatever it says below the Create Map button. Unless they just recently got rid of it too.

 

[Dan_85]

I joined the Beta version of it about 6 months back, but chose to revert back to the old, "classic" version after about a month or so.

As Nick said, it's much more confusing to use & it also seemed to use more CPU power on my machine. My computer is only about a year old but everything would get very sluggish & the fan would go into overdrive every time I used it. Hopefully it remains an optional choice...

 

[pixie1339]

I'm not a fan either. I liked using Google Maps mostly for trip planning. Now you're limited to adding 10 points to a directions list. I know 10 might seem like plenty, but planning a tour of an area it really sucks to not be able to bring the whole map together.

Sent from my DROID RAZR HD using Tapatalk

 

[Howells Outdoors]

Messaged my friend who works up there and he said they have been getting mostly negative feedback about it. That's all he said, but you can imagine they will be chamging it again sometime.

 

[Killq]

No my friend, it does indeed SUCK! Apparently Google is taking a page from Microsoft's playbook and letting products escape before they are anywhere close to ready to be used. I just talked a client into using it because you can't use any of the old versions commercially. It has been a disaster. I hope this is an anomaly and not the beginnings of a trend from our friends in Mountainview.

 

[Jammer]

Oh man... Google Maps is still sucking and making my current project a miserable experience.

Does anyone know how to control the order/depth of lines within a layer?

I need to have a map with lines (eg routes) that intersect, but I want to control which line is on top where they cross. I can see no logic as to what controls this. None of the following factors seem to matter: order in panel, order created, last modified, number of points, choice of color, or line width.

AND... after I finally got a map like I wanted it and closed down, I returned later to find the line depths had changed! Ug!

I'm hoping it's something simple that I'm missing. But, my search queries for support via Google have yielded zero.

Any ideas?

- Jamal

 

[uintahiker]

To quote Pelosi, "Embrace the suck".
No ideas! Good luck.
Just wondering, what is your current project that makes the order important?

 

[Jammer]

To quote Pelosi, "Embrace the suck".
No ideas! Good luck.
Just wondering, what is your current project that makes the order important?

It's just my personal project. I've been working on consolidating all the maps from my site into one uber map with POIs and water info. I have all this in Google Earth for my personal reference, but want at least some of it online for sharing.

I've played with the Google API for custom maps, but that was too tedious. Same with Gmap4. I finally decided I would just simplify it a bit and use the new Google Maps. But where multiple routes overlap/cross it's just extremely ugly/confusing when I can't control which line has prominence (especially at wider views.)

Ideally what I want is for more detail to become visible as the user zooms in. But, I can't find an easy solution for that so I'm about to embrace the "good enough for now" view.

- Jamal

 

[Nick]

Ideally what I want is for more detail to become visible as the user zooms in.

I spent a ridiculous amount of time last winter learning the google maps API and the required javascript to do this. I can share with you what I have, but it is definitely not easy in any way. Lots of manual coding and direct implementation on your site rather than embeds.

 

[Jammer]

I spent a ridiculous amount of time last winter learning the google maps API and the required javascript to do this. I can share with you what I have, but it is definitely not easy in any way. Lots of manual coding and direct implementation on your site rather than embeds.

Thanks, Nick.

I might have to revisit my work it that area and ask you some questions.

I did get the zoom feature to work with JavaScript, but the whole process was so tedious that I gave up on it as a solution. My other goal was to have an end-user method to toggle on/off various folders. This I can now do in Google Maps -- but if I want more than 3 folders I'd have to upgrade to Pro for $5/month (not worth it IMHO.)

- Jamal