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Google maps
Nov. 6th, 2015 08:59 amToday I will be mostly Grrring about Google maps. In particular, I am Grring about the extreme rubbishness of Google maps when you try to print a page out. (Or, at least, when I try to print something out. There may well be a trick to it that I've entirely failed to notice.) On Monday, I needed to walk from Waterloo Station to a place barely half a mile away. I therefore adjusted and zoomed the map so my screen showed both Waterloo Station and my destination, at a scale detailed enough to show the relevant road names. However, "print preview" informed me that if I printed it, I would get a completely different area, one that didn't include Waterloo Station, and almost all the road names would disappear. I zoomed in, reasoning that I didn't need to have the whole of Waterloo Station on my map. This time, every tiny little alleyway and lane had its name showing on the map on the screen. Print preview: almost all those names had vanished.
Other mapping sites don't seem to have that problem. I sometimes use Streetmap, but find the maps rather dense and busy in urban areas, due to the thick roads and black lines around them. A colleague recommended walkit.com, which instantly managed to give me a map showing my start point, my end point, and all the relevant road names in between. I'm going to London again today, and this time needed a slightly longer route, from Waterloo to somewhere in Westminster, and again walkit.com coped admirably. Google maps gave up entirely, giving me a river and some patches of green, with the rest of the page a desert of nameless beige.
Why is that, when asked to print a page, Google maps promptly erases all the useful information from the map? (This is a genuine question. There may well be a Good Reason for it that I am unaware of.) Do they assume that everyone using the maps is doing so on a portable device? By trying to print out a useable map, am I asking for something that is SO last century that it's ridiculous?
Other mapping sites don't seem to have that problem. I sometimes use Streetmap, but find the maps rather dense and busy in urban areas, due to the thick roads and black lines around them. A colleague recommended walkit.com, which instantly managed to give me a map showing my start point, my end point, and all the relevant road names in between. I'm going to London again today, and this time needed a slightly longer route, from Waterloo to somewhere in Westminster, and again walkit.com coped admirably. Google maps gave up entirely, giving me a river and some patches of green, with the rest of the page a desert of nameless beige.
Why is that, when asked to print a page, Google maps promptly erases all the useful information from the map? (This is a genuine question. There may well be a Good Reason for it that I am unaware of.) Do they assume that everyone using the maps is doing so on a portable device? By trying to print out a useable map, am I asking for something that is SO last century that it's ridiculous?
