Google Map and Earthing

Yesterday (and also a few days ago) with my google maps work I was working on getting it working with unique urls as set out at http://ajaxpatterns.org/Unique_URLs (except I didn't bother implementing an iframe for <IE8 compatibility).

But then this morning, I was thinking that actually if you are using Google Maps, do you expect the back button to go back to the last interaction you made with the map (e.g. scrolling or opening an info window)? My thought is that no, you would expect the back button to go back to the previous page. By recording all interactions with the map in the url hash, if you made 100 interactions, you would then need to use the back button 100 times to get back to the previous page.

So I changed my code to not update the hash, then wondered if it was just me who thought this way about how the back button should work with Google Maps. So I did a google search, and found this post where the writer is complaining that you can't easily bookmark a google map. While he doesn't complain about lack of back button functionality in Google Maps, he does complain about it with another website.

So I posted to the sitepoint forums to see what other people thought.

I did some vacuuming and then spent quite a while doing KML stuff. I was trying to find out why my KML would load would it wouldn't fly to the loaded placemark and open the bubble for it. After quite a while of trying different things I eventually figured it out - I had used ;balloonFlyTo when it should be ;balloonFlyto. Doh!

I then tried to get multiple icons working in my KML but got stuck, so posted to the KML forums / google group to try and get some help.

I wrote some more of this blog post, then looked into whether it is possible to somehow delete the browser history for the page so that the URL could be updated without creating history states. This way bookmarking the current state of the map would be easy, while pressing the bck button would take you back to the previous page instead of back to the last interaction you made with the map.

I didn't think this would be possible, but it is - using history.replaceState(). It seems that currently this is only available in Chrome (maybe other webkit browsers as well), and the FF4 beta.

I downloaded the IE9 Platform preview, and was disappointed to see that this doesn't support it either. So I filed a feedback report in the vain hope they'll fix it. I would guess they'll wait until other browsers have been implementing it for a few years before they add it to IE though.

In the evening I was working on converting an image in DXO, ACR, and CNX2 to compare how well they handled CA correction of the Tokina fisheye. While I was doing this, I listened to a webinar with Dean Hunt and Phil Henderson. Dean introduced the webinar and said that he would hand over to Phil who would get straight into the 'meat', and wouldn't bore you with his life story.

But then, Phil spent ages talking about his life story, and how his life is so great now etc. etc. He was saying that he loved having the freedom to do what he wants and just go out trout fishing whenever he wants.

Then later he said that he was retiring as internet marketing was too much work and too tiring. He said that he would never promote or sell another 'make money' product after this one. And he said he only had 3 places on his new course. In fact, the course is so 'hush hush' and secret that you have to sign and NDA if you purchase one of the three places.

Then later he expanded the amount of places to 5. And later still Dean Hunt kept saying that Phil might open some more spaces in two weeks. Phil said that it might not be in two weeks, but did indicate that he would indeed be opening up more places in the future. So suddenly the course is not so exclusive as it was at the start of the webinar.

And regarding not selling any more 'make money' products in the future, I guess Phil must think that closing a course and then opening it again in the future doesn't constitute selling any more 'make money' products because it is the same product?

On the whole then, I wasn't impressed with his sales technique.

Another thing was that he said the course was a good few months 'ahead of the curve'. Now, I don't know exactly what the course was about, but Dean hinted strongly and Phil somewhat confirmed it was about Local search marketing. (Where you do internet marketing for local businesses). Local search marketing certainly isn't 'ahead of the curve', as I've seen quite a few people promoting it heavily already.