Platial members & lurkers: take a sneak peek

This preview is just for Firefox and recent IE browsers as we fine tune.
Safari is being extremely finicky.

preview.platial.com

NOTE: ANYTHING YOU ADD TO THE PREVIEW SITE WILL NOT EVER SHOW UP ON THE LIVE SITE. The preview site IS NOT CONNECTED TO THE LIVE DATABASE. This means that you should not add rich, extensive, time consuming Places to the preview site. We have brought the bulk of the recent data over FROM the live site, to make the testing experience as realistic as possible, but you should not expect that the data you enter here will be preserved or accessible at any later date.

This is the most extensive platform update/overhaul we’ve done since launch in December. Help us go live within a few days by banging on it and letting us know what happens.

We've been listening and integrating all of your feedback so far and have emerged with something we hope you'll enjoy even more. But please keep the feedback coming- it's early days for Platial. Nearly every change or improvement has been made based on your feedback, your challenges, and your wishlists.

But we need your help making sure it is not going to fall over. In exchange for the sneak peak, we ask that you submit at least one, if not multitudes, qualified bug report.

When you report bugs or make comments, use the feedback form that is linked to from the bottom of any page. It is very helpful to us if, when you hit a snag and report it, you include as much of the following information as you can:

1. the url of the page where you had the problem

2. what you were doing just before this happened

3. what browser and which version you use (IE6, Firefox, etc)

Here are the known critical bugs at this point, no need to report these:

• safari is just broken in a lot of ways (adding comments will crash the browser, etc)
• when you add images to an existing place, the images are small and the enlarge-hovers don't work
• the site feels slow, we would actually like feedback if you seem to have certain areas where this is happening
• when you edit a Place that is already on a map, it looks like the edit accidentally removes the Place from the map
• some email and notification issues do exist
• some images weren't ported over successfully, this means you'll see more "file not found" image holders
• from the profile page, clicking the markers in the map don't do anything
• Place contributors (taggers, etc) aren't being listed

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Here's what's new:

Easier to navigate:

• Updated design. You've asked for results to show above the fold, now they are in the sidebar. You can see a slim list, or the full Place cards including tools with one click.
  
• More use of the user icons to help visualize who did what.
• Item counts in the sidebar: for a person's Places, a map, and tags.
• Easier to find tools: now you can add Places and create maps from these buttons which are always on map and profile pages.
• Map tools: Add Places to map. Its not as easy as we'd like yet but anytime you're looking at a map you can use the Add Place button to add to the map and your Places with one click.
• Better map size and style stickiness, it remembers your preferences.
• Less getting lost, due to many functions, like adding new Places, are now inline. You never lose your focus on the map.
• Context: Place details now show without leaving the map, or search results that they are a part of.
• A more you-centric navigation: when you're logged in, the main links are about you first.

Easier to organize your information:

• Easy bookmarking of maps. You can del.icio.us any map from the map detail area.
• URLs for permalinking and staying in map
• Better pivots in the sidebar.

Easier publishing:

• Better publishing- anyone (logged in or not) can publish any map anywhere (previously you could only publish your own maps).
• Super fun flickr image search integration using the Creative Commons image pool makes enhancing Places much easier.
• Easier browsing: The new yellow "stream of consciousness" bar at the top. When you aren't logged in, you can see who has last grabbed, commented on, tagged, mapped, or added a Place.
  

Easier editing:

• Add any kind of image at any time, plus, no more 3 image limits.
• Flickr built in. More to come, too.
• Inline tools: you can add tags and images without leaving the page.
  

Beefier backend:

• A rebuilt underlying structure that will allow us to deploy new features at a breakneck pace.

Fun stuff and pretty touches:

• Better geocoding - now with the 50 "states", "usa", and the "world"
• Better smaller map markers, with a more intuitive connection the the sidebar's "Place cards".

There is much left undone and we are still working on it! Thanks so much. We'll keep this open for testing for a couple of days before we migrate to live.

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We also want to give up a big shout out to all our users!--
those who've added just a couple of meaningful Places and those who've helped build this atlas-in-progress with hundreds of additions. We really do have to thank these early users who have given us tons of consistent feedback and helped us greatly while using a site that was extremely beta.

Comments

[garyjwood]

I like the look of the preview site. But I'd *really, really really* like to be able to enter a latitude/longitude directly.

Why? Because (1) Most of my "places" are photos, and a lot of those photos are taken in places that don't geocode. Either they don't have a street address (e.g. parks and natural settings) or they are outside the US, Canada and the UK; (2) I have a hand-held GPS, so I know with reasonable accuracy where my photos were taken.

[Christian]

the new interface feels great!

i agree with garyjwood. pinpointing places outside the us, can or uk can be quite difficult based on google maps v1. adjusting or locating places by entering lat/lon would be very helpful until base maps in those regions become more accurate.

[jason]

adding by lat-long as well as bulk uploading of places as well as track log uploading are all future features that we are sure to bring in. These may all come as one bundled set, or roll out one by one. The lat-long is a highly requested feature. Thank you for the feedback!