New Google Maps

[stormwatch7721]

Thanks for the tip, formulaone.

[Billy F 1988]

I hate to say this but the new Google Maps is just worthless. Even classic G Maps. With the countless mistakes they make and correct every time, why waste the effort when you can just use Bing, Yahoo, or MapQuest?

[kphoger]

I hate to say this but the new Google Maps is just worthless. Even classic G Maps. With the countless mistakes they make and correct every time, why waste the effort when you can just use Bing, Yahoo, or MapQuest?

Because I've been disappointed by all three of those as well.

[BigMattFromTexas]

Wow. I changed back to classic maps as soon as I could...... No Google. No.
BigMatt

[DSS5]

You click on the blue "Help & Feedback" drop-down at the top-right, and chose "Return to Classic Google Maps" at the bottom of the list.

Every time though I click "Yes" when I get asked "Do you want to make the change permanent." But every time I go back it's changed back to the new Maps.

[Billy F 1988]

I hate to say this but the new Google Maps is just worthless. Even classic G Maps. With the countless mistakes they make and correct every time, why waste the effort when you can just use Bing, Yahoo, or MapQuest?

Because I've been disappointed by all three of those as well.

Yeah, so what?!

[hotdogPi]

These will be based around Boston.

There are 6 levels of roads, from least important to most important:
Dead end roads.
Unimportant roads. Most residential roads are this type.
"Yellow roads" : The ones that used to be yellow.
Route numbers (with a few exceptions: MA 145 is a "yellow road" , but Sylvan Street in Peabody MA is in this category despite not being a route number). County routes are not included, and they are usually less important.
Orange roads: They have always existed (only roads visible at lowest zoom level on April Fools 2013), but they have looked normal before the color change. All US routes, except ones with A, are orange, but some state routes are also orange, especially in the state of New York.
Freeways, a dark orange.

The outermost 3 levels show no roads.

Zoom in one, and you see the interstates. Not all freeways, but just the interstates.

Zoom in two, and you see some orange roads (MA/NH 125, but not MA 2) and all interstates. Note that non-interstate freeways (MA 128 in Gloucester) are not shown, unless they are also US routes (US 202/MA 2, though orange and not freeway). The orange roads are gray.

Zoom in one, and the orange roads actually turn orange. White US routes (like 1A and 2A in Maine) show as a thin line.

The next zoom level is probably the worst. State routes appear at random, even if they are orange routes or freeways (MA/NH 125, MA 24)

Zoom in one, and you get something much better. "Yellow roads" , route numbers, orange roads, and freeways are shown correctly. "Yellow roads"  are a thin line.

Zoom in one, and you see the same, but unimportant roads are shown, but thinner than "yellow roads" . Dead ends are still not shown.

Zoom in one, and "yellow roads"  are not thin lines anymore.

Zoom in one, and dead ends appear.

Zoom in two, and everything is shown as an actual road and not as a line.



Problems with which roads are orange:
I feel that MA 114, NH 16 (non-freeway part), and MA 9 should be orange. It seems really strange to make 9 mostly white (it's a divided highway with teacup handles) with 125 orange.

[Duke87]

So, looks like the revamp has gone live for everyone now.

Things certainly work differently - not being able to right click on the map is weird, but I suppose this is forward thinking given the increasing number of devices people are using where there is no such thing as being able to right click. I can see how the new interface is more friendly to anyone using a touch screen instead of a mouse.

Still, after playing with it a bit, I'm not finding any functionality that was actually removed. The only thing conspicuously missing is the image date info in street view (which was nice but not really that important in the grand scheme of things).

The fact that it now uses vector graphics rather than raster tiles is a definite plus since this is friendlier on people's data plans (and in theory should mean things load faster although I'm not noticing a difference on my laptop).
A nice improvement is that if you're in Street View you can now jump around real fast by just clicking on the map. This is less immediately intuitive than clicking and dragging, but faster and smoother once you get used to it (and quite fun to play with. Whee! I'm teleporting! ).

Overall I think I approve of this. It seems the kinks in the beta people were complaining about have been worked out.

[hotdogPi]

It's not back for me.


And you could always click in Google Street View. It's not new. With perfect clicking, you could go about 50 MPH.

[Duke87]

And you could always click in Google Street View. It's not new. With perfect clicking, you could go about 50 MPH.

You were and still are able to click on the image. But now you can click on the map on the lower left and instantly jump to anywhere with in a 1/4 mile radius. I just went all the way across Manhattan in 8 clicks.

[vdeane]

My computers don't do WebGL, so it's still tiles for me even in the new version.  I'm sticking with the old one for now - it's faster than the "lite" version of the new maps, and I can use the distance measurement tool, plus street view doesn't cause driving directions to vanish in the old maps.