Bing Maps: A New Look for Pushpins, Popups, and Transit

Bing Maps  just rolled out some exciting new updates to www.bing.com/maps that make it easier for you to find information on the map, explore the layouts of over 850 venues, as well as get to where you’re going with public transit (or transport). Read on to learn more!

Pushpin and Popup refresh

The pushpin. It’s the most common element overlaid on a map. And today, it’s getting an update. In making these changes, to both the pushpin and corresponding popup, our goals were simple: enable you to find the information you want, more quickly and efficiently, while at the same time minimizing obstruction of the map. Let’s take a deeper look at some before and after examples.

The updated pushpins are designed to better overlay on top of our base map color scheme and make it easier to find results when you perform a search. Search related content appears in blue, while user-generated and saved content (such as “My places”) use an orange colored pin. The contrast changes are more pronounced on hover (and for business searches, the corresponding item in the left-hand panel is adjusted as well), and we’ve also added a new small popup to tell you the name or location or the pin you’re hovering over. Now it’s much easier to quickly scan a bunch of pins to see what they are.

 

 

When you click to select a pin, it actually shrinks so as to expose more of the map underneath, and unveil our streamlined popup. Here, we’ve made a number of changes to more compactly display the relevant business or location information and stand out against the backdrop. The most popular actions available for each item have been simplified and consistently placed at the bottom. For most users (except those in the UK), the interaction has changed from a hover-only model to a click-based model for showing the full popup contents. (For users in the UK, where you already had to click to see the popup, we’ve simply added the new smaller hover popup in addition to the layout and style changes.) Overall, these improvements allow you to keep a popup visible while panning/adjusting the map, and even hover over other pins to see what they correspond to, ultimately making it easier for you to find the place you want more efficiently.

 

One final change you may have noticed is that the pushpins and popups dynamically adjust based on the current map style in order to ensure the information does not get lost on the map.

 

Enhanced Transit Experience

Public transit (and UK transport) users will find a handful of subtle improvements to our directions experience that make it easier to get where you’re going, and make sure you’re on the right line to get there. We’ve changed the way we represent each transit line to better reflect the actual colors and signage used by the line, both for our US and UK markets. You’ll see this reflected both in the on-map waypoints as well as our enhanced directions list.

 

 

More sharing options

We’ve also extended our ability to send directions to your mobile phone (via SMS) to support transit directions. This functionality is accessible via the “Send: Mobile” link at the bottom of the directions panel. You’ll receive a link on your mobile phone which loads the directions on m.bing.com, and works for all devices which can access m.bing.com (unfortunately, Windows Phone does not currently support transit).

 

Drag to modify your route

Users can now easily modify their directions routes by clicking and dragging on start, end, or waypoints. You’ll see a helpful tooltip appear when you hover over an element that can be adjusted simply by dragging and dropping—and the route will be recalculated automatically!

Explore venues

Did you know Bing Maps now has over 850 venue maps of airports, malls, shopping districts, and more? Browsing through them is now easier than ever! Just click on the “explore venue maps” link on Bing Maps, or visitwww.bing.com/maps/venues to get there directly, to browse a categorized listing of available venue maps. You can filter them by country, sort them by location (or alphabetically), and browse through them spatially on the map. If you want to have your venue be part of Bing Venue maps, please contact us for details.

 

We’re excited about this next step in the evolution of our visual design and believe it is a big step forward for simplifying user interaction with the map, and helping users find the information they want quickly and efficiently. We’ll be rolling out these changes to bring consistency across the broader Bing network over the next few weeks.

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YouTube: More Ways to Find What You’re Looking For

We’ve got some exciting additions to the list of supported search parameters for YouTube feeds that should make it easier to narrow down your search results to exactly the videos you’re looking for. Each of these search parameters has an accompanying element in a video entry’s metadata, which we’ll cover as well. Here’s a quick rundown:

  • license - This parameter lets you filter search results based on whether they’re Creative Commons licensed (license=cc) or use the standard YouTube license (license=youtube). The default behavior is to return videos regardless of their license in search results. The license for a given video entry is reflected in its element.
  • hd - This one lets you request videos that have high-resolution versions available. If you specify hd (no value is needed), all the videos in your search results will be available for playback in at least 720p, and higher resolutions, like 1080p, might be available, too. If you leave the parameter out, then search results won’t be filtered at all based on resolution. The element corresponds to this search parameter.
  • duration – If you cater to an audience with a short attention span, then this parameter is for you. This parameter lets you filter search results based on video length. To find videos less than 4 minutes long, use duration=short. To find videos that are between 4 and 20 minutes long (inclusive), use duration=medium. Only videos that are longer than 20 minutes will be returning when requesting duration=long. The element in a video entry provides a video’s exact runtime.
  • 3d – Finally, for those of you living in the future who want to find 3D content on YouTube, this aptly-named parameter is for you. Adding 3d (no value is needed) to your searches will ensure that all videos you get back are available for viewing in 3D. Videos that are available in 3D will have a element in them, and that element will contain more detail about the nature of the 3D content in the given video.

Putting it all together, let’s say you want to use the API to find Creative Commons-licensed 3D YouTube videos that are available in resolutions of 720p and above and are longer than 20 minutes.The following request URL will return a feed of such videos:

https://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos?prettyprint=true&v=2&license=cc&hd&duration=long&3d

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Bing Maps V7 Modules

The Bing Maps 7.0 Control was released last fall and is a complete rebuild from the ground up when compared to previous versions of Bing Maps. We have seen huge improvements in API performance and the size of the control. One feature of the map control is that it uses a modular framework, which allows you to register and load modular blocks of code as they are needed. This means that you are able to load in features only when they are essential, which results in faster loading speeds. Not only does this allow you to load in additional Bing Maps features and functionalities, but it also opens itself up for custom modules.

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Creating a custom reusable module allows you to save time when making multiple applications since common blocks of code can be designed to be written so that they can be reused. By making code reusable, development time can be reduced. If the module is properly maintained it will also become better with time as bugs are fixed and optimizations added. But creating and maintaining a collection of modules may be a lot work for a single person.

Let us introduce the Bing Maps v7 Module CodePlex Project. This is a community site where people can share their modules for Bing maps. By having one central location for hosting these modules we make it easier for developers to find them and reduce the need to go searching through blogs for them. To date there are currently 4 modules that have been submitted for inclusion in the portal.

Module Name Description
Client Side Clustering This module allows you to easily add in clustering functionality into Bing Maps simply by using an extended version of the EntityCollection class called ClusteredEntityCollection.
Custom Infobox Control This module generates highly customizable infoboxes.
GeoRSS This module allows you to import GeoRSS files into Bing Maps. This module supports majority of GeoRSS and GML tags.
Simple GeoRSS This is a light weight module that can load a Simple GeoRSS feed to Bing Maps.

This project site also includes information on how to create and submit modules for inclusion in this site. If you have an idea for a module but are not sure where to start, add it to our list of module ideas here.

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Discover Stories with New Microsoft Local Impact Map

Every day hundreds of nonprofit organizations are hard at work improving education, facilitating research, and giving people the skills to find work or start a business.  When a nonprofit really connects with its community it becomes more effective and it leads to thousands of incredible stories from every corner of the world – stories that help inspire even greater achievements.

At Microsoft, we want to help these nonprofits succeed. One way we can do that is to make it easier for them to tell their stories. So with that goal in mind, our Corporate Citizenship team has used Bing Maps to build theMicrosoft Local Impact Map, a new tool that allows you to discover the stories of the communities you care about most, stories about how people and technology are having a real impact.

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One of our favorite stories comes from our team in India that worked with local teachers to train them under thePartners in Learning program. In the community of Dharwad, Project Shiksha was created by a group of trained instructors to establish a residential school for students with hearing impairments. One trainer in particular used an incredibly unique approach to help the students learn to use computers. Find out what she did by reading the story here.

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Of course, this story is only one among thousands. The Local Impact Map provides a living record of how technology is having a positive impact in communities around the world. We invite you to take a look and read examples of people working together for a common good.

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