Something to Play With

[tinker]

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6310843/Grid_Toy.zip

Grid Toy adds grids to Google Maps and provides a lat/long readout as a cursor follower.  It is a very small file.  You can download and unzip, then check the readme and double-click the html file to try it.

Comments, suggestions welcome.  Public or private.

[Spaceman3750]

Will the grid show up when you try to print a map?

[tinker]

Will the grid show up when you try to print a map?

Yes.  So will the lat/long follower if it is visible when you print.  Unfortunately the mouse (crosshair) pointer is not printed.  Same story when using the Print Screen key.

I am thinking about adding some kind of range ring around the crosshairs, but it would appear with all mouse pointers regardless of what the user was doing.  So I am not sure that is a good idea.

I don't see it as a tool for printing maps in general, but printing a magnified/detailed highway map for an assigned grid might be useful.  I have been sent on photo missions to little towns that I never heard of and that didn't show on the sectional.

[Spaceman3750]

Will the grid show up when you try to print a map?

Yes.  So will the lat/long follower if it is visible when you print.  Unfortunately the mouse (crosshair) pointer is not printed.  Same story when using the Print Screen key.

I am thinking about adding some kind of range ring around the crosshairs, but it would appear with all mouse pointers regardless of what the user was doing.  So I am not sure that is a good idea.

I don't see it as a tool for printing maps in general, but printing a magnified/detailed highway map for an assigned grid might be useful.  I have been sent on photo missions to little towns that I never heard of and that didn't show on the sectional.

I will take a look at this tonight. I was wanting to use Google maps to give to participants in a training scenario in a small area but was having issues with the lack of gridlines to align your compass with.

[Al Sayre]

What I would really like to see for Google Earth is a tool that will draw a circle of known radius from a given point.  Now that we aren't getting 121.5 satellite data, it would be really useful for narrowing down a search area using airborne reports.

[tinker]

I was wanting to use Google maps to give to participants in a training scenario in a small area but was having issues with the lack of gridlines to align your compass with.

It should work for that.  Just click off the grid number markers if you don't want them.  If you zoom down far enough you will see quarter-grid markers added to the display, though they are light gray and may not print well depending on the map background you choose.

What I would really like to see for Google Earth is a tool that will draw a circle of known radius from a given point.

Well, this is Maps, not Earth.  If I add a range ring I can size it at a mile or two.  Giving the user a bunch of size options (radio buttons, for example) would take screen space away from the map though.  What size ring did you have in mind?

[sardak]

What I would really like to see for Google Earth is a tool that will draw a circle of known radius from a given point.

Here you go. GE Path will draw circles in Google Earth (which is a different animal than Google Maps as mentioned).

http://www.sgrillo.net/googleearth/gepath.htm

Mike

[Al Sayre]

Cool, thanks!

[Spaceman3750]

I actually had the chance to look at this sooner than expected. I'm zooming all the way in, but no additional grid lines are appearing. Can you offer any guidance on this?

Thanks!

EDIT: Nevermind. Can you maybe add grid lines at lower levels? The area I'm looking at is the size of a medium city park.

[tinker]

Can you maybe add grid lines at lower levels? The area I'm looking at is the size of a medium city park.

The quarter grids are 7.5nm high and that's about as low as I can go.  The issue is speed; Google Maps has to deal with all the lines and symbols every time the zoom is changed, so I can't add too many doodads without bogging things down.  That's also the reason that setting the map size to CONUS makes it sluggish -- there are about 16,000 symbols that must be dealt with.  Sorry.

Al, I am playing with some range ring concepts.  Going-in idea is to automatically size the ring based on the map scale, from 1nm diameter upwards.  Maybe up to a 100 nm. ring when fully zoomed out.  The range ring shows up when printing the page and its size will be noted on the lat/long follower panel.  Would that approach help you?

[Spaceman3750]

Can you maybe add grid lines at lower levels? The area I'm looking at is the size of a medium city park.

The quarter grids are 7.5nm high and that's about as low as I can go.  The issue is speed; Google Maps has to deal with all the lines and symbols every time the zoom is changed, so I can't add too many doodads without bogging things down.  That's also the reason that setting the map size to CONUS makes it sluggish -- there are about 16,000 symbols that must be dealt with.  Sorry.

Al, I am playing with some range ring concepts.  Going-in idea is to automatically size the ring based on the map scale, from 1nm diameter upwards.  Maybe up to a 100 nm. ring when fully zoomed out.  The range ring shows up when printing the page and its size will be noted on the lat/long follower panel.  Would that approach help you?

OK, what about letting me get to the zoom level I want then click a "lay grid" button. That would make it so it doesn't have to render a grid for an entire state all at once, just the level I want.

Thanks for your help. I think it's a really great tool and that's why I'm asking so much >:.

[Al Sayre]

Can you maybe add grid lines at lower levels? The area I'm looking at is the size of a medium city park.

The quarter grids are 7.5nm high and that's about as low as I can go.  The issue is speed; Google Maps has to deal with all the lines and symbols every time the zoom is changed, so I can't add too many doodads without bogging things down.  That's also the reason that setting the map size to CONUS makes it sluggish -- there are about 16,000 symbols that must be dealt with.  Sorry.

Al, I am playing with some range ring concepts.  Going-in idea is to automatically size the ring based on the map scale, from 1nm diameter upwards.  Maybe up to a 100 nm. ring when fully zoomed out.  The range ring shows up when printing the page and its size will be noted on the lat/long follower panel.  Would that approach help you?

 

Not really, the idea is to drop a circle of radius X around a known point.  X would be the max receiving range selected based on the altitude of the reporting aircraft, and the point would be the reporting location.  With multiple airborne reports, the areas of overlap would indicate the highest probability of location.

[tinker]

Not really, the idea is to drop a circle of radius X around a known point ... areas of overlap would indicate the highest probability of location.

Makes sense, but I don't think this can be the tool to do it. Sorry.

OK, what about letting me get to the zoom level I want then click a "lay grid" button.

Hmmm ... I'll think about it.  You're just trying to get some unlabeled lat/long lines on there?  Maybe PM me with details.

Thanks for your help. I think it's a really great tool and that's why I'm asking so much >:.

Thanks.  I think I'll find it useful when I'm running Air Branch.  Hopefully some others will too.  I'm interested to hear more feedback.

FWIW, I do have a prototype that's upgraded to have a range ring feature as described a couple of posts back.  With the slower browsers, though, it's almost comical to watch the ring frantically trying to keep up with the cross hair mouse pointer.  I'm trying to figure out a way to speed it up a bit.

[sardak]

Nice. My only comment is that sectional grid IDs would be helpful. I was looking at spot which is the corner of four sectionals. Being familiar with the area I knew which was which. It might be more difficult at 3 AM when my brain is still asleep and it would help those who aren't as familiar with the sectional locations. If it's possible, the three letter sectional ID or a color coded legend would work.

Mike

[tinker]

sectional grid IDs would be helpful

Yeah, I know.  My original idea was to make the markers clickable, then pop the name of the sectional.  But after seeing the abysmal performance of the IE8 javascript engine, I decided that doubling the number of objects that it had to deal with was not a good idea.

But, a legend?  I hadn't thought of that and I think I see how to dynamically generate one in a way that won't burden the browsers very much.  There will be 1-4 colored blocks displayed depending on how many sectionals are in view.  I'll work on it and let you know.

[tinker]

OK, version 0.22 is now posted at the same URL:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6310843/Grid_Toy.zip

It includes chart legends as suggested by sardak and also the range-ring feature.  The range ring is still slow to the point of amusement, especially on IE8, but the ring does show on printed pages where the mouse cursor does not.  So it will help if Grid Toy is used to make air crew tasking handouts.

I also tweeked a few settings to improve the view on 1024x768 screens.  It's best to use full screen mode (F11) at this resolution though.

See the readme file for instructions on changing the state and grid type defaults.  Comments and suggestions solicited.

[DKruse]

Excellent work!  This is a great tool.  Thanks for sharing.

[davidsinn]

Looks good and works great on Firefox 3.6 Could you add a selection for range ring size? A 1nm ring isn't really useful when the map is 40nm wide.

[tinker]

Looks good and works great on Firefox 3.6 Could you add a selection for range ring size? A 1nm ring isn't really useful when the map is 40nm wide.

Thanks.  Re making ring size a user option, I am basically out of vertical space on the left when the display screen is 768 high -- this is a common resolution on tablets and notebooks.  So to do it I would have to sacrifice map area by making the controls area wider.  But the automatic range ring sizing is very ad hoc and easy to change in the code.  I'll play with it a little bit and see about keeping the 5 mile ring for one more zoom level before switching to 1 mile.   Thanks for the feedback.

(If you have any kind of programming background, you can see the ring size logic at around line 720 in the file.  Fiddle as you like and let me know what you learn.)

[davidsinn]

Looks good and works great on Firefox 3.6 Could you add a selection for range ring size? A 1nm ring isn't really useful when the map is 40nm wide.

Thanks.  Re making ring size a user option, I am basically out of vertical space on the left when the display screen is 768 high -- this is a common resolution on tablets and notebooks.  So to do it I would have to sacrifice map area by making the controls area wider.  But the automatic range ring sizing is very ad hoc and easy to change in the code.  I'll play with it a little bit and see about keeping the 5 mile ring for one more zoom level before switching to 1 mile.   Thanks for the feedback.

(If you have any kind of programming background, you can see the ring size logic at around line 720 in the file.  Fiddle as you like and let me know what you learn.)

Since most monitors are wide format these days making the toolbars on the sides and leaving a more or less square map would work. I have almost no programing experience so I can't give you any advice there merely user feedback.