Hello,
Firstly I would like to say a big thank you for offering an alternative to Google Maps in response to their API changes, it's greatly appreciated.
Unfortunately we are having quite a few issues with Azure maps as an alternative, particularly around user interaction. It's particularly hard to navigate using mobile/tablet (e.g. zoom gestures etc) and it's not possible to disable mouse scroll etc for desktop. Also the popups don't render HTML and are just displaying raw code.
I understand that it's just a basic implementation to begin with and that you are potentially looking at other map provider solutions. I was just wondering whether any of the above issues were being looked at and if so the potential timescales involved, and also whether you are looking at implementing an OpenStreetMap/Leaflet solution similar to other map plugin providers (e.g. hidden link ) as this would hopefully address the above issues and would be a completely open source solution without quota limits.
Many thanks
Hi, thanks for the feedback. As you know this is still a work in progress, and I was told during my recent training for this feature that Azure features will be the focus of an upcoming Maps release. So before another mapping engine like OpenStreetMap/Leaflet is implemented, I expect to see more parity between Azure and Google Maps integration. Please feel free to submit a new ticket using the "Suggest an improvement" option here in the forums to request implementation of an open source system. Your vote will be counted by our developers.
For the other 3 issues, I have submitted these to my 2nd tier support team. I feel like the popup HTML issue should be handled as a bug, but I suspect I will be told it is an improvement that didn't make the cut in the latest release. I'll let you know what I find out. The scrolling issues have been reported as potential usability issues for the team to investigate during the next round of development, and I'll let you know what I find out about those. I see a ticket in place now to implement zoom controls, so I suspect this will be part of that development task.
Thanks again for your feedback, it helps us!
Hi Christian, thanks for the encouraging response. I've submitted a "Suggest an improvement ticket" regarding the open source solution which I think would be a fantastic addition. I look forward to hearing what you find out regarding the Azure maps improvements.
There are a couple of other issues I should also have mentioned regarding Azure maps:
1) the markers seem to display the post title below which makes it aesthetically look a bit messy with lots of markers - it would be great if there could be an option to turn this off, I did try and find the relavant css id/class in inspector but failed;
2) we've got hundreds of markers on some of our maps but when you first go to the map you can only see a few, you have to zoom in to see further markers but this wouldn't be immediately obvious to users (we haven't got clustering enabled).
Thanks again
Okay great, I know that clustering is part of the upcoming tasks so that should be addressed in an upcoming release. There's no corresponding HTML element for the markers, because they're rendered in an HTML5 canvas. I haven't received any information about manipulating those markers on-the-fly, but I'll pass your comments along to the team.
Thanks Christian, and sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I can see that many of these issues are being worked on from the recent blog post which is great (and hopefully the map controls improvements will cover touch gestures). We have actually been able to move to Leaflet/OpenStreetMap on our single marker maps which has helped, and from some of the blog comments it sounds like it may be possible to do the same for our main filterable maps (with multiple markers) by using Views to generate the markers - I'll have a go at doing this but may need to raise a separate support ticket if I get stuck!
Thanks again
Hi Christian, apologies for re-opening this but I'm just looking at Azure maps again as an interim solution because Google Maps is no longer working. Could I just check whether the markers on an Azure map should at least be clickable to take you to the relevant post or is this not possible yet?
Thanks
Clicking on a map marker is intended to show the marker popup, so they're not hooked up for navigation or custom click handlers. Since HTML is not rendered in those popups yet, you would have to use the View to output a list of post links as well as the markers, and let the Users click the text links outside the map to navigate.
Hi Joel,
If you don't mind me asking, how have you managed to get leaflet working with Toolset? We're starting to get errors with Google now and looking for an OSM based solution.
Thanks!
Ignore the above!
I've found that people are now using the leaflet plug-in, I'll look into this and see if it works for me.
Quick update to let you know that we have released a patch for the HTML rendering issue in Azure Maps popups: https://toolset.com/errata/html-content-added-to-a-marker-popup-is-displayed-as-raw-text-when-using-azure-maps-api/
Feel free to install the patch and let us know if the rendering issue is not fully resolved for you.
Great, thanks for the update and for resolving this issue so quickly. I'm actually pretty happy with how Leaflet is working at the moment but it's good to know that improvements are being made to Azure in case we do want to go down that route in the future.
Thanks
Hi Dave, happy to give some pointers with Leaflet if you're still struggling, not sure if there's any facility to direct message via the forum?
