GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 722864
Provide more details on results
Last modified: 2016-02-02 11:46:08 UTC
Search for the following: 5334 de Gaspé, Montreal Result: you get 5 different results in the popover/dropdown, with no indication at all which one is right. This is a bit of a problem, especially since it takes ages to programmatically scroll and zoom onto something. A potential solution would be to add a bunch of points on the map (A, B, C, D, etc.) and identify them in the drop down; zoom out, and when the mouse hovers over any of the items in the dropdown, highlight the item on the map (maybe with a big shadow except a circle around the point?). That way I can tell what I'm clicking on.
I don't see any map implementations doing that. Regarding scroll/zoom being slow, thats already fixed and if there is still room for improvements there, we'll look into those but we shouldn't drastically change a UI because of an unrelated bug. I think what we need is better results. I think this will mostly be needing fixes in Nomanitim (which is the same as that of openstreetmap) database.
You get the postal codes for each of the options at least? If not try to run the latest of geocode-glib, but yeah, street names are not good from Nominatim. :(
> I don't see any map implementations doing that Google Maps and Bing maps. The problem is that most map search systems are too damn good/accurate so searching for "5334 de gaspé montréal" yields only one search result. But if you fuzzy things a bit, for example: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=de+gasp%C3%A9&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sll=45.526165,-73.594868&sspn=0.012522,0.01929&t=m&z=16 Or go to http://bing.com/maps and search for "gaspé montréal" ...you'll end up with multiple choices shown on the map.
Hmm.. probably makes sense to ensure all results are visible upon showing the search results and then hilighting the place on map (somehow) when cursor hovers over the associated row in the search results popup. Although I wonder if this would be the case of 'loosing the context without explicit action from user that clearly implies such change of context', which IIRC is bad UI pattern.
*** Bug 719586 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Created attachment 271272 [details] [review] mapView: improve ensureLocationsVisible The ensureLocationsVisible method does nothing if we are zoomed out far enough so that all locations are visible. Improve this by first zooming to the max zoom level. So that we ensure visibility but nothing more.
Created attachment 271273 [details] [review] Go to search result on cursor-changed In order to get a better feel of where the search result is located have the mapView go to the location when cursor is on it.
A problem is that the search popup covers a lot of the map :) These (rfc) patches makes some effort in showing where the locations are. Not tested all that much but could make a difference, at least in feeling. The first patch could stand on its own I guess.
This approach tho makes the actually going to the place awkward. If we really want something like this, or some kind of highlighting of the places, then the search result might want to move to the sidebar. Thoughts?
I use google maps and I find their idea about this quite convenient. After a search, first, lets say 5 results are indicated by pins on the map regardless of what the user clicks on. When the user clicks on one result only that result's popup is shown but the other results are still present. The user can click on the each of the 5 pins to check the popup information and zoom on the one they want.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 748304 ***