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peterW
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Panoramic Earth version 2.0 needing review... - 4/19/2007 12:10:01
Hi all,
have been recommended putting this request here by another forum user, so here goes.
Having spent quite some time upgrading Panoramic Earth and it has gone live in the last couple of days.
I would really appreciate any feedback and comments about the site. Helena (Yoho) is already on to me about Accessibility stuff, but comments from others welcome.
The site provides panoramas of places to see linked to Google Maps with local descriptions. In order to prevent the whole page, and thus the google map, reloading every time someone looks at a new image, much of the content is dynamically driven.
One problem I have found with it presently is that the Google Ads on the site (often) do not have any bearing on the rest of the page (like the Singapore locations. If anyone has any ideas as to how Google Adsense interacts with Ajax sites that would be really helpful. That then leads on to how Google and other SEs crawl this kind of site.
Thanks in advance for any comments and snippets of advice you care to pass on!
< Message edited by jaybee -- 4/19/2007 13:21:46 >
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jaybee
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RE: Panoramic Earth version 2.0 needing review... - 4/21/2007 18:10:55
Ajax is new, the current buzzword, inaccessible and other problems but you're stuck with it. So get some content in the page another way. Can't you have a short description in plain text that loads into a box underneath the map? I don't know how your data is stored but if it's a database have a text field stored with the image that loads along with the picture. Or have a sentence on the page that is a standard description but replaces the place name with the current one. That could sit at the top. Something along the lines of Panoramic Earth Information on Singapore
Having said that, the Google ads were coming up fine for me and there is some place info on the page:
quote:
Direct link to this pageAsian Civilisations Museum (picture by Peter Watts)
Map data ©2007 TeleAtlas - Terms of Use
Map
Satellite
Hybrid
Asian Civilisations Museum
Travel information with panoramic images linked to an interactive map about the sights and attractions in Singapore from PanoramicEarth.com
Address:
Empress Place, Singapore 179555, Singapore
Travel and Transport:
MRT North-South (City Hall, NS25 or Raffles Place, NS26), East-West (City Hall, EW13 or Raffles Place, EW14)
I don't know if we have any Ajax experts on here. It's so new that most of the geeks are over in geek places talking to each other about it. You also picked a heck of a time to post this. Most people have a weekend. 
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Now where did I put that Doctype?
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Nicole
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RE: Panoramic Earth version 2.0 needing review... - 4/21/2007 18:39:10
Welcome to Outfront Peter!
A couple of comments:
1. Nice idea, but I do wonder just how long Google will take to do something similar anyway? They already provide images people have taken all over the place, they link to a Wikipedia style article on towns etc, so why wouldn't they just add panoramas next?
2. I visited Thailand just then. Lovely panorama and it's great how the google map shows which angle the camera is pointing while you're viewing the panorama, but in the case of the beach in Thailand, the pointer was pointing inland when the picture was of the ocean and vice versa?
3. The shade of blue in the banner just doesn't do it for me - and you also use other pastel colours that seem to me to be a bit uninspiring. It's a kind of travel site so shouldn't it be a bit more vibrant, brighter colours, some bolder. contrasting text? Images of holiday destinations?
4. Viewers on any screen resolution lower than 1280 x 1024 have to scroll to choose a destination - shouldn't that be closer to the top somewhere?
Like I said though, a good idea, hope it catches on.
Nicole
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Tailslide
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RE: Panoramic Earth version 2.0 needing review... - 4/22/2007 4:18:15
I like it a lot - just spent ages looking around London where I used to live - got all nostalgic (sniff).
As far as the screen width goes - I'm fine down to 800x600. The layout re-sizes itself to suit the viewport width, I'm not getting a scrollbar at all...
Things I might think of changing?
I'd personally rethink the banner area. I'd have the logo at the left hand side and move the login boxes to the right hand side of the header.
I'd also think seriously about out-sourcing the logo design - I really hope that doesn't sound rude! A really good logo can make the difference between sucess and failure of a site as it adds to the air of professionalism and can seize the spirit of the moment. I'll PM you with a suggestion of somewhere to get a "pro" logo pretty cheaply (not me - I wish I was artistic!), I hope you don't mind.
Interesting site though - this is a prime example of why I like the web so much!
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d a v e
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RE: Panoramic Earth version 2.0 needing review... - 4/22/2007 4:59:13
looks promising but i got stuck on the map in edinburgh. where do i find the panoramic view from there? or is there not one yet?
i looked at St. Peter's Basilica - View from Portico Entrance (picture by Peter Watts) which was pretty cool, but then i was wondering why there isn't an example panorama on the index page or a mini version in that right hand pane where it says recently added destinations?
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womble
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RE: Panoramic Earth version 2.0 needing review... - 4/22/2007 5:21:59
/Wombley runs into thread and posts message
I had a look at this last night (was half way through posting on this thread when I fell asleep - no reflection on the site, just 14 hours straight at the keyboard isn't good for sleepy wombles ) Once I'd figured out what to do, I had great fun whizzing round in circles looking at Menorca, where I had a number of holidays in my younger days, and though I've never been skiing and don't intend to start, Austria was great fun.
Looks good, although as the others have said, perhaps the general colour scheme needs to be a bit more vibrant, and the banner does need some work. Even on broadband it did take a fair while to load for me the first time last night, though there did seem to be a fair bit of congestion on the intraweb around here last night, so I'm not quite sure how much you can do about that.
Like I said, once I'd figured out what to do, it was fun, but it took me a while to get going - possibly cos I was a) half asleep, and b) am a womble of very little brain. I'm wondering if possibly the link to the instructions could be a bit more prominent and/or whether you can have some sort of demo on there. I know using Flash 'n' stuff brings even more accessibility problems, but may be worth considering. <edit>Duh! Ignore last comment - Wombley didn't bother to read the instructions on the right before launching in!  </edit>
Finally (and I realise this is only a "young" site), you currently only have limited areas of the globe covered. Do you take all the pics yourself? I'm wondering if you could enlist the help of others in widening your coverage, and possibly adding a travel themed discussion forum to help with that, and provide another avenue for promoting interest in it. I'm also wondering if rather than relying just on Google ads, you could approach local businesses in the areas you've got covered to advertise on the site - more targetted than Google ads and another revenue stream.
Hmmm, Ajax???? Is it really a good idea to clean a server with a harsh cleaning product like that? 
/wonders what this "weekend" thing is of which Jaybee speaks...
/runs out again and carries on coding PHP )
/pops head round door to the thread again...
btw, welcome to OF! 
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Nicole
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RE: Panoramic Earth version 2.0 needing review... - 4/22/2007 5:46:36
Hi Peter,
It's this one:
http://www.panoramicearth.com/destination.php?ref=258
But upon looking again it's not as bad as that, the line on the map kind of indicates where the extreme right of the panorama is and I expected it to be the middle.
I've just had a thought though, instead of using a line, can you use a triangle shape to show the area that is currently in the panorama?
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peterW
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RE: Panoramic Earth version 2.0 needing review... - 4/22/2007 14:13:19
quote:
ORIGINAL: Nicole
I've just had a thought though, instead of using a line, can you use a triangle shape to show the area that is currently in the panorama?
Interesting idea Nicole, just a couple of things about it, to use a triangle to show the area viewable would potentially need resizing the triangle with different browser windows, as the viewable area adjusts to a max and min as you resize the browser window. Also, redrawing a triangle as the image rotates means yet more drawing time and could make the movement of the direction locater and the image more jumpy.
Regarding http://www.panoramicearth.com/destination.php?ref=258, how far in did you zoom the Google map? Once you go to the max available image I think you may find that it matches the coastline.
Mike54 - The image up/down movement is an occasional bug. Not really sure what causes it. Have thought about resizing the image frame so that there is no need for this movement, but this needs to be balanced against screen sizes to try to keep both the map and image visible without having to scroll up and down all the time.
Re many pins on a map - well, zooming on on the Google Map helps pull them apart. I have thought of trying to make the pins smaller, but also wanted to be able to differentiate different kinds of locations (churches / museums etc) from one another, and this becomes more difficult with small pins. Yet another trade off.
LEFT_LEFT error, happens with the old applet maps, aware of, and will get round to in due course. More of this data will move over to the newer Google maps, and in the end probably only the ski resorts will be left running the applets as they need piste maps to make any sense!
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treetopsranch
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RE: Panoramic Earth version 2.0 needing review... - 4/22/2007 18:37:39
Those Panoramic photos are stunning in Firefox but fail to display in Netscape if you are interested.
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treetopsranch
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RE: Panoramic Earth version 2.0 needing review... - 4/22/2007 21:10:12
Netscape 7.1
I guess it's time to get a later version.
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Printable Version 
re the AdSense stuff: 
