Google Maps

[fabrisse]

Does anyone know how to make google maps behave again? I'm not visual. The new version is so counter-intuitive for me as to be essentially useless.

ETA: I found out how to permanently revert it. I also took a survey explaining why the new version is terrible for people who can't orient themselves visually.

Comments

[siderea]

I'm not seeing a new version; I'm getting the old version.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

It seems there's some sort of limited roll-out? Apparently some people have been testing it for months. Essentially all you get is a huge map across the page and a tiny typing window. If you don't know the symbols, you can't even "get directions." And then there's that god-awful Pegman. *shudder*

[siderea]

Huh, that's like the moronic thing they did with the gvoice, which hid basic functionality - making an out-going call! - from visual inspection. We managed to flame them into fixing that.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

Google is obsessed with the visual in ways that I find very difficult to use. I know that most people are more visual than I am, which isn't hard, but the rest of us need to be able to use it, too.

[eanja]

On a computer or on a phone? I haven't noticed a difference on my laptop, but on the phone I just uninstalled the new one and will stick with the old until it finally stops working.

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

I think some areas are getting it before others. But, yeah, I figured out how to revert.

[malnpudl.livejournal.com]

No answers, but massive sympathies! I am a text-based, language-based life form. Give me pictures, symbols, icons, images with no text or instructions and I will fail miserably to figure out what they mean and how to use them. I will not accomplish things. I will, in fact, do a good deal of swearing.

Not all of us think the same way. Humanity has known this for many decades. Why do computer system developers insist on ignoring this?

[fabrisse.livejournal.com]

Your icon sums this up for me.

Language-based life forms UNITE!