ioMap

Two people independently have raised the issue of update speed for the Flash maps when accessed by dial-up connections (thanks for your feedback guys!). Basically the map stays in its blurry state for too long while the detailed images load.
I’ve been considering the options for this and I think the best one by far is to introduce a set of intermediate scale image tiles – here’s the logic:

• The map currently is 400 x 400 pixels (I’ve tried various sizes and I don’t want to go any smaller than that).
• Zooming in, the Zoomify Flash interface loads images at 50% scale, so a total image size of 800 x 800.
• With the current tile size (256 x 256) the number of tiles vertically and horizontally will always be 4 or 5, so the total number of tiles to form the image will be 16, 20 or 25.
• By introducing the extra images I should be able to load at 70% instead, with a total image size of 566 x 566 so only 3 or 4 tiles each way – total number of tiles 9, 12 or 16.
• On average I think I should end up loading about half the number of images for each view without increasing the individual image size.

So that’s the theory. In practice I don’t think it will be possible using the free Zoomify interface so will have to wait until I get my dHTML system going…

Any comments or other suggestions welcome.

The new site finally goes online to showcase forthcoming developments to the interactive Australia maps. Some more work is needed before this kind of map can replace those on the Cheers maps and Lake Macquarie directory sites so this is a sneak preview. Please try it out and if you can spare me the time to leave a comment it would be much appreciated.

This is an example of a new map interface using Flash. Notable changes include:

• Maps stored as image tiles at various scales – allows for much larger and more detailed images without overloading the server.
• Background colours and watermark on images.
• Asynchronous updates (continue scrolling / zooming in and out while the map is updating).

The zoom / pan controls should be self-explanatory so please try it out and let me know what you think!

Looking for the old ioMap site? Sorry, it’s no longer available, but I’m building up something much better – interactive maps of Australia using Flash and (soon, I promise!) Ajax, plus the ability to customize background images, use special colours and symbols, edit the map contents, incorporate your own map images and lots more…

For now please see the ioMap home page for the latest Flash version of the Aussie map.