About that re-direct…
April 15th, 2008
A great thing about the Internet is that when you put yourself on the line and get things right, users sometimes tell you . The downside of course, is that when you get it wrong, users ALWAYS tell you. In public.
Last Friday we announced the integration of Multimap into Windows Live Search in the UK and among the many developments, we started routing users directly to the Multimap service from MSN UK and Live.com. It was the first major step along the path of our integration within Microsoft.
On paper, it all looked good. Given that Multimap is a much more recognised brand with UK users than Live Maps site, serving over 45% of the UK mapping audience, building on this brand felt like the right thing to do. And it still does.
Steve’s blog explains a bit more about why it didn’t go as well as we hoped. As he mentions, we have turned off the redirection in the UK for the time being while the redirect stuff is nailed down. We’re currently working to provide a better user journey and signposting to Live Maps UK from the Multimap site in the short term, so that we can direct the MSN UK mapping traffic and other Live Search sites to http://www.multimap.com. Users entering http://maps.live.com directly will not be re-directed.
In the longer term, we’ll be working to integrate popular features such as Collections and 3D, as well as other great Live Search Maps functionality into multimap.com.
We’d also like to make it clear that Developers and businesses that have invested in Virtual Earth technology are unaffected by the redirection of our Live Maps and MSN mapping traffic to Multimap in the UK. We will continue to support both technology platforms and expect to offer an expanded set of opportunities and features over time.
The future for Multimap within Microsoft is very exciting. We apologise for any inconvenience we caused you in the past few days and thank you for your continued feedback and passion.
April 20th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Is this why your service has suddenly changed? What on earth has happened??? The design i’ve just experienced is a step backwards! Your redesign does not allow me to do things i previously could. WE can no longer print out several pages with the overall approach and three maps in total, a page where we could add info. We can no longer choose the view of the map we are going to print. I used to click ‘print’ then be able to decide where on the page to be printed the little red circle was going to appear. i could click hold and drag it till the page was showing the view beneficial for me depending which way i was coming from. Now, we can’t do it.
Flipping microsoft! All damned slaves to this monopoly which does NOT promote good competition, better design. I shall give up using multi map now because of this.
April 21st, 2008 at 10:37 am
Thanks for your comments Jan.
We changed the printing feature you mention as many of our users were having trouble printing highlighted routes and other markers with the previous design. This meant that we unfortunately lost the ability to move the map around before they printed it.
Users have told us that they really liked this feature, so we’re working to keep everybody happy, and re-introduce this feature. It will probably take a couple of weeks to bring it back, so please bear with us!!!
April 30th, 2008 at 3:44 pm
As previously promised, this morning we brought back the ability to move the map around before printing.
It’s not the complete solution, and Firefox users will need to bear with us as there are a few well known issues with printing the red circle and directions. We’ll hopefully be fixing these in the next few weeks as well.
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:19 am
New Multimap is great if you want all the special effects. But like the movie industry you have lost the basic plot. ALSO some of us just want a “mobile phone” to call people with. We dont need fancy ring tones OR a 8meg camra, OR a built in MP3 player. Get my point?
My big complaint is when I want to print the map I now get all the stuff underneath. See I don’t need all the ‘nearest this & that’ because i’m driving, using my orgnavsyst (eyes & brain) AND the “new” map only prints to one third of an A4 page instead of a half (original version) SO the area displayed is smaller, SO I have to print more maps = more paper (so you have just increased your ‘Microsoft carbon footprint’) PLEASE keep an option for us Dinosaurs and give me the choice to use which site as & when I need it. Old proverb= If it ‘aint broke, blah blah, SO if you intend to improve it, DON’T re-invent it to look good. Like most things, it got great the way it was and didn’t need a drastic make-over unless some one needs to justify their job!
May 19th, 2008 at 4:53 am
the print option for me now separates into two pages - the header the address etc is on the first page with a huge blank space beneath and the map on the second page. why is it doing that?