Holy cow, Yahoo's new maps are so good it makes me want to weep.Check it out here.Just a small list of things that make it phenomenal that no one else has:
- Mini map in the upper corner with translucent edges makes it a breeze to get around and see where you are
- Real time traffic integrated right in
- Searching for stuff shows categories on the left that you can auto click
- Directions (with from and to boxes!) built into the interface
- The directions allow multiple waypoints
- The nice balloons over things that you're looking for are very unobtrusive and invite clicking (cartoon bubbles are very inviting for people)
- The balloons fold out wonderfully on mouse-over and then expand even further with a click
- Every action is bookmarkable with a URL
- I can drag way points up and down the side list
- Mouse over directions highlights the segment on the map
- Drag and Drop from the map to the directions!
- SEND DIRECTIONS TO PHONE VIA SMS!!
- Errors (such as multiple listings at a single address) present a nice fold out error box associated with exactly what's wrong
- Stop the clicking sound! (Note, IE causes this, but there's got to be a better way)
- The URLs are great, but it screws up my history and my back button (after 5 minutes of clicking around I had over a hundred Yahoo maps in my history list)
- Different way points should have different colors
- My popup blocker stops new windows from opening when I click on the "more info" link
- As I drag further away in the minimap, it should scroll faster
- Zooming in could have that nice fade in fade out effect that Google maps does
- Still kind of jumpy, especially when doing searches... i frequently lose where I am. For an example, search on Microsoft, then search on "UPS". It lists the stores, as it should, but when you start looking and clicking on the stores you're interested in around, it jumps zooming in and out seemingly randomly... probably just a bug
- Dragging and dropping directions should "grab" the entire balloon rather than just the words
- When you drop down a specific segment of a direction, it should do something (what? I don't know... maybe that map portion)?
- When you drag and drop a balloon onto the direction list, it seems like you're dragging it in between two segments of a direction... it's a bit confusing
- Traffic should highlight a road segment rather than just a dot
- Could be a faster
- Did I mention it has to STOP THE CLICKING SOUND! (Still, this can be done through IE, but should be better)