Archive for December 8th, 2007

Flickr Maps Change… not for the better

Saturday, December 8th, 2007

If you have watched the growth of photos tagged with remarkableohio on the Flickr map, you should have noticed a fundamental change in the way it works.

My original plan was to have one page that showed every marker tagged with “remarkableohio”.  Now you get a listing at the bottom that says there are 277 pictures, but only about thirty red dots show up on the map.  It takes a lot of work to see the rest of those dots.

I thought zooming in on an area would show all the markers in that area.  This is not the case.  From the full Ohio map, I zoomed into the Findlay area.  I stopped when Hancock County filled the screen.  I waited for the red dots to show up.  I waited a long time.  Nothing happened.

In other words, no markers showed up in Hancock County.  This is about as bad as it can get.  I have specified a tag with at least fifty hits around the county where I live and none of the markers are on the map.  To get those markers at this new zoom level, I have to do a completely new search by clicking “Search the map” and then TYPING my tag.  Flickr doesn’t even remember that I have already typed the tag on the previous page. 

After a new search, Flickr says there are 54 matches but still only shows about half of those markers.  If you want to see all the markers, you must zoom into a specific area and TYPE another search.  I zoomed into downtown Findlay, TYPED a new search and still don’t see almost half of the markers in the downtown area.

Way to take a killer application and cripple it, Flickr.  Why isn’t there a button that says “Show all markers”???

Also, why did the scroll mouse zoom go away?  I used it all the time.  Now it’s gone.

Please give me my old Flickr map back!