live-tracking.locusmap.app web page

[Tapio]

Usefulness and my acceptance of the locus livetracking would be bigger, if there wasn't wasted space on the target website. I can understand you need to sell Locus client, but still, enthusiasm may not arise from bad websites. As much map space as possible, please! A floating hamburger menu and "buy locus" only inside the menu please.
Also that center/right info extender is too huge.
I'm obviously talking about the smartphone interface.

You must make something really good, because otherwise the Whatsapp+Google maps livetracking is the preferred solutuin for people.
IMO.
Last note: It improved, I have seen it. But needs to be better.

[lor74cas]

Usefulness and my acceptance of the locus livetracking would be bigger, if there wasn't wasted space on the target website. I can understand you need to sell Locus client, but still, enthusiasm may not arise from bad websites. As much map space as possible, please! A floating hamburger menu and "buy locus" only inside the menu please.
Also that center/right info extender is too huge.
I'm obviously talking about the smartphone interface.

You must make something really good, because otherwise the Whatsapp+Google maps livetracking is the preferred solutuin for people.
IMO.
Last note: It improved, I have seen it. But needs to be better.

You can slide the menu bar to the top to make disappear the link bar of the browser, but it's not obvious for the user.
I think that all the white space on top and bottom in menu bar can be deleted.


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[Andrew Heard]

Usefulness and my acceptance of the locus livetracking would be bigger, if there wasn't wasted space on the target website.

+1 I had a recent help topic on this but can't now find it ;-(

[lor74cas]

LiveTracking

On the website I can choose to follow someone of the the tracked users.
In this way I can see not only the user position, but also the user data.
Position is updated but the data is not.

[Tapio]

Livetracking: Chat from Locus to web is not possible? It should. I have already seen it in another LT-Solution.

[Andrew Heard]

Thanks all for the feedback for our new Live tracking web. It is work in progress

I like the way when you click on a "group" icon it zooms in to maximize the spread of users; then if you click on an individual icon it re-centers them to the middle of the screen. However once centered a further click does nothing, but maybe it could open the right side panel to display the user details? Yes I know I could click the << link, just lazy. The panel also says "PUBLIC GROUP" but really it is a public individual - I know it is just static text, whether a group or individual is selected, so very cosmetic.

I wonder whether the group count is correct. In Sweden, Suomi I currently see 5 users. When I zoom in a little it splits into a group of 4 + 1 individual. But when I zoom out it shows the group as 6. The numbers don't add up.

It would be nice if, like Google Maps, the URL was continually updated, or there was a Permalink link somewhere you could bookmark, so you could quickly return to your zoomed/ panned part of the world.

[Tapio]

GPS tracking ideas:

Allow optional download of gpx. Allow time control on how long positions and GPX are revealed.
Allow to add POI on both sides, so people can show poi, give hints...

[Andrew Heard]

Allow time control on how long positions and GPX are revealed.

+1 nice idea, my partner used the live tracking of my ride a few weeks ago but was confused when my position disappeared when no mobile signal at times. It would be better if last known position was retained for (say) 30 minutes (or even longer) rather than just a few minutes.

Also see attached screen cap - support date format DD/MM/YYYY

[lor74cas]

GPS tracking ideas:

Allow optional download of gpx. Allow time control on how long positions and GPX are revealed.
Allow to add POI on both sides, so people can show poi, give hints...

+1 good idea, the user icon on the map with a position not refreshed after for example 10 minutes should be surrounded by a red circle, after 30 a black one and at 45 or more disappear from the map. In this way you can immediately know if that position is good.
I think that the icon for safety  reasons should persist for a very long amount of time, also 24h, and be removed only when from locus close a connection message was sent to the server.


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[lor74cas]

Live tracking
In the user data should be useful to include  battery status.
In this way if someone unexpectedly disappear from the map no more answering at the phone we can know that almost sure it's a battery drain and not the worst horror movie our brain can imagine.

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[Menion]

To not mess main Locus Map version topic with a discussion about the live-tracking web page, I've separated these topics, sorry for the small mess.

Thanks to this, @milan.cejnar (as a person responsible for LT feature) may read and forward all good points to our external cooperators etc. Thanks for understanding.

[Tapio]

Web interface:
In order to refresh the info box to the right, we need to click the LT icon on the map. But it changes zoom level which I do not like because I find myself always fighting against the web interfaces wish for zoom out.

Wishlist:
- Support more maps and OSM-themes.
- Also, topplus maps are great, I think free to use. https://www.bkg.bund.de/SharedDocs/Produktinformationen/BKG/DE/P-2017/170922-TopPlus-Web-Open.html

[milan.cejnar]

Hello guys,
I would like to address most of the issues or suggestions you have mentioned here.

A common thing mentioned by all of you has been a wasted space on the top of mobile web page. This is a valid suggestion and we will talk with the web page designer about this and about improving the mobile UI experience generally.

As for mentioned control of the time the user is visible on the map - we have just added this functionality. It can be set by the owner of the group in the group settings globally for the whole group. Public group session time remained to be set to 10 minutes. Also some indication of how fresh the position is mentioned by lor74cas is also something we think would be useful, but is not implemented yet.


@lor74cas
Thank you for noticing that user data do not seem to be update at all in the recent version, that is definitely a bug.
Adding some other user data including battery is a good idea, we would probably also need some sensible way of showing the data values if their number increases, definitely something to think about.

@tapio
Live chat is currently not available through web interface, it is something we would like to implement some time later.
GPX is currently not generated by the live tracking server but we would like to have some kind of online track recording feature or maybe integrate track recording and live tracking together somehow to be able to share live tracking track.
For POIs, hints, comments etc. the Live chat should be used, but this option is currently missing from the web interface as stated previously.
Automatic zooming to the user after they are selected is really weird at the moment, you have described it quite precisely as fighting against the web interface. We will talk with the web designer to disable this zooming function completely and leave only centering to the user's position enabled.
Also regarding your problems of users not showing on the map, there were actually two possible causes of this. First there was a bug, which led to the positions not showing when the group user (session) timeout was set to indefinite, but that should be fixed since yesterday. Secondly there is a problem if the user icon's URL is invalid and then it does not show on the map. This still needs to be fixed. In the meantime try refreshing your avatar in Live Tracking profile or selecting one of the Locus Icons instead, which should work correctly.

@Andrew Heard
Thank you for the suggestions, most of the are good tips but we will focus on more pressing UX issues, as the web page obviously needs an update after the first release.
As for the user counts in the group/cluster not adding up; I think that the number was actually correct but some of the people had incorectly set icon URL (we had some issues with Google changing avatar URLs recently) and so one of the people was invisible when zoomed in to show the icon. We will try to fix the issue.
As for supported date/time format - the web should be using default for your device's locale. There should be no need to set it anywhere. Is format MM/DD/YYYY unusual for your locale? Other units are displayed using metric system only at the moment, which might also be confusing for some people unfortunately.


Anyway thank all of you for all the suggestions and feedback, it really helps us to pinpoint potential problems of lacking features of the new interface.

[Andrew Heard]

nice progress

>on the top of mobile web page
web AND PC web page?

>Public group session time remained to be set to 10 minutes
why not longer?

> Is format MM/DD/YYYY unusual for your locale?
isn't MM/DD/YYYY mainly USA format? I thought more common would be DD/MM/YYYY; and the latter is the way other websites display a date to me in Australia; both formats are problematic - who is to say whether 04/03/2019 is 4th March or 3rd April ;-( but that is not your problem

[Tapio]

Thanks Milan. Agree highly with Andrew, wasted space on web interface. The top bar makes it look like an advert page. Like: "this page is not the real deal".