May 7, 2002

11:42 AM

The Magnifier. What a great way to present visual detail and overview at the same time. Why can't Mapquest do this?
posted by luser (16 comments total)

Its admittedly a neat feature. In this case, it seems poorly suited to the task. I would probably want printable directions, or to have the graphic at a readable size in the first place (it's not that magnified). I can think of a bunch of cool applications for this though.
posted by xammerboy at 11:46 AM on May 7, 2002

LA-based architects Morphosis also does this trick but with thumbnails - albeit in flash.
posted by plemeljr at 11:47 AM on May 7, 2002

Clever use of DHTML and a moveable frame. But why not just show a bigger picture at the outset?
posted by mkultra at 12:11 PM on May 7, 2002

Yeah, particularly since you have to wait for the giant-sized image to download anyway.
posted by owen at 12:28 PM on May 7, 2002

Why can't Mapquest do this?

Why can't Suicide Girls do this?
posted by adampsyche at 12:30 PM on May 7, 2002

Because this is at 11. It's at ten, plus one. It's one louder. </spinaltap>
Yes, we can agree this is not the ideal use of the technology -- any other uses come to mind?
posted by luser at 12:31 PM on May 7, 2002

Why can't Suicide Girls do this?

For many of those ladies, the distance is a kindness.
posted by luser at 12:37 PM on May 7, 2002

Accuweather has a beta version of this, too. It's pretty cool on the Doppler radar pages.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 12:47 PM on May 7, 2002

I like the concept but it seems to be poorly implemented. For instance, you can hold the entire magnifier off the picture and it is magnifying cables, etc. Essentially it's just a bigger picture behind a smaller picture, as opposed to magnification of a point on the smaller picture. That scheme would be disastrous in larger applications.
posted by zekinskia at 12:49 PM on May 7, 2002

One can get some interesting Aerial photos out of Mapquest. Check out:

Cryptome


eyeballs

Try looking at your own part of the world by clicking the Aerial photo button when getting a map for your intersection.
posted by yertledaturtle at 12:52 PM on May 7, 2002

Disclaimer: work self-link. Here's a magnifying thing I made to show the anatomy of The Euro (Flash).
posted by rex at 4:01 PM on May 7, 2002

Doesn't work in Opera. The whole big image appears and moves around with the frame. I was like, "What needs magnifying? It's plenty big enough already."

In IE it is somewhat cooler, but still not very useful.
posted by kindall at 4:15 PM on May 7, 2002

Possible answers to the initial question: in my experience, Mapquest's maps are shitty, so magnifying them might not be that useful. Or creating the equivalent effect for a huge quantity of data might be prohibitively expensive? Or prohibitively time consuming to download? Or Mapquest is selling their good maps as a premium service? I pizzeria I stopped at last weekend while cycling said they had a "Mapquest CD-ROM."
posted by ParisParamus at 4:29 PM on May 7, 2002

Doesn't work in Netscape 6, either. IE only?
posted by mrbula at 5:32 PM on May 7, 2002

I've seen this put to nice use by this artist. Looks like it's a great thing if you are a painter and want to show detail in your work.
posted by ceibo at 6:56 PM on May 7, 2002

yeah, granted that this magnification stuff is good, but could the magnified area be a little larger?
posted by monkeyJuice at 1:37 AM on May 8, 2002