Map Search Improvements

I noticed some problems and thought through some enhancements to Googility's map search page and I found some time this weekend to work on them. Here are the couple of new features:

• Moving the mouse over the search results now pans the map to that location and displays the details for that location on the map. I was inspired by this demo.
• Switching between the Results and Directions tabs now hides the other tab's markers (red or green flags) on the map. This makes it clearer what you are looking at.
• If you search for a location that only has a couple of "Places" near it the map is now centered around Places within 300 mi of that location. Previously if you searched for agility near London, England the map would be centered over the Atlantic and you wouldn't see any flags on the map.
• If you go to the map search page directly the search box contains the text 'Type your start or search location here' and the text is removed when you click in the box to enter your location of interest.
• Once you create directions to a Place you can change your start location without having to reselect your destination Place. Just click on the Directions tab again and the directions will be updated.
  

Here is a bullet list of bug fixes:

• Once you clicked on the directions link for any location on the map the map would appear below the directions - now it stays next to the directions on the web and when printed.
  
• On Internet Explorer 6.0 the search results would take the full width of the screen - now the layout is the same as for other browsers.
• The width of the Results tab and the Directions tab is the now the same so the tabs don't resize when switching between them.
• Places with two line addresses would give errors for driving directions.

I'm hoping to add two other features soon:

1. Add a blue flag for the search location to make it easier to see the desired location.
2. Add start location, end location, and reverse directions text entry fields and button respectively to make it easier to change directions.

Don't forget once you find a location on the map you can click in the Google "search the map" box at the bottom of map to locate other services near that location. Say you wanted to bring some MACH, NATCH, CATCH, ADCH or other celebratory cookies to class, you could use the Googility map search to find a bakery near your training facility!

Better & Faster Clean Run Article Searches

I just installed a couple of nice improvements to Googility's Periodical Search feature.

Previously the search results were ordered solely on the search engine's rating of each article's relevance to your search terms. That meant you might get results from 2000 or even longer ago on the first page of results.

I've just modified the search engine configuration to prefer the most recent results. So if you search for "Mecklenburg jump" to find Linda Mecklenburg's jumping articles you'll get her most recent articles on the first page and her older articles on later pages.

I've also changed the way I "index" the article's data to the search engine so that it can present the results 10x faster. It is a noticeable speed improvement.

Happy Searching!

New Website Image Features

The images of websites on Googility.com are created using a free service provided by Shrink The Web. I had created a simple piece of software to simplify using STW in the Django software that runs the website.

The kind folks at STW asked me to update my software to make their PRO features available. Those features include custom sized images and, most importantly for some Googility web sites, creating images for web sites that are part of another web site.

For example, agility trainer Theresa Rector's site is hosted on mac.com and her website used to look like this on Googility:



Now you can see her actual home page:


I've also increased the size of the images so users of the site can better see the website. STW is now updating the images monthly so changes to web sites will be visible sooner.

If you are a Django developer the django-stw application is available for download. If you are a Googility visitor I hope you like the improved web site snapshots.