Thread: Maemo Mapper v0.2 Released
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2006-05-30 , 17:39
Posts: 1,245 | Thanked: 421 times | Joined on Dec 2005
#72
Originally Posted by mwiktowy
If it is a choice between a high CPU fancy rubber-band selection or a simple low CPU remember the last two taps, I would be very happy sticking with this existing two taps solution. It is much better than those fields being left blank.

In my experience, the current usability problem with the current approach is that the map scrolls when you are trying to make your selection ... often times scrolling your intended second point off the screen. The solution is to zoom out to a bigger area and then manually change the zoom selection back to your intended scale to download.

It would be great if the selection box idea could be done efficiently but I am pretty happy with the esisting simple approach.
In my currently planned ConOp, there will be no CPU-intensive "rubber-banding" in the final solution. I'm not going to force users to needlessly drag their potentially-old stylus across their potentially-fragile screen just to define a download area. There will simply be a "Select from Map" button on the "Download by Area" dialog box that will hide the dialog box and allow the user to select (with visual feedback) opposite corners of their desired download area - in the future, it may even allow you to draw arbitrary polygons, but let's take it one step at a time.

Basically, you'll be "drawing" your download area on the map, and when you're done, you'll be taken back to the "Download by Area" dialog box and the coordinates will be automatically entered into the fields.

Not only is this more intuitive than the "use last two center points" approach, it's also less obtrusive, since CPU is not used to continuously keep track of your previous center points (on the wild chance that the user is actually wanting those center points for the "Download by Area" dialog box).

But the "use last two center points" was simple to implement and is in the code now - it's a stop-gap until I design and implement something better.