SMP main page enhancement

Thanks Rob, happy with the approach of the page remembering my settings via cookies. In an earlier post you mentioned you weren’t to happy about using cookies if it could be avoided - hence my suggestion to have the additional features turned off by default.

Ed.

Update: Just tried this - disabled the “enable nearby regions display” option in settings and the neighbour regions still display as boxes (no summits in them but the region areas are still shown). I then refeshed the page and the selected rehion (TL in Austria) went from the top and no regions were then available for selection. The OE Austria was still there however. By selecting a completely different association (one of the US ones) the regions appeared again and when I changed to OE Austria, I got the regions displayed again in the pull-down menu.

Ed - why try it first and THEN refresh the page? Surely it’s more sensible to refresh the page and THEN try it??

This is something we have discussed before: when new code is uploaded to the server, it won’t automagically be loaded into the browser. To be absolutely sure one gets the very latest code updates, one should do a <Ctrl>+F5 (or <Mac>+R for Apple users) - this should become second nature to browser users. You know this!

I tested and re-tested the code many times to ensure it doesn’t do what you have described, before publishing it. Please do a complete page refresh before testing new features. If it doesn’t seem to work, refresh again - if it’s still wrong, let me know, but I have to say I can’t reproduce what you describe; not with the new code at any rate…

EDIT: performing a simple F5 refresh (as opposed to a full <Ctrl>+F5) will very often (= always) result in controls like dropdowns NOT being properly initialized, thereby skewing relationships between those controls and others. Only a full <Ctrl>+F5 refresh properly loads new code AND re-initializes all controls to their startup state.

Rob

Mer Culpa, I had always thought that shift+refresh symbol is the same as ctrl+F5. i.e. a full refresh. That is what I did previously, (at least I think I did). Ctrl+F5 has loaded the new code and the changes are remembered without the drop down menus being impacted.

I should have also realised that many parts of the code are browser based not server based, which explains what I saw.

All working correcty now thanks.

Ed.

Implemented! …as an option which you can enable/disable, of course.

Rob

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Another small addition to the main SMP page. I received a question from Mark N6IV as to how to print the map in the main page and found some code online to do just that. However, since no native Google maps printing function exists, it (and others like it) is a bit of a kludge solution, depends on which browser is being used (big surprise, that!) and kind of works - at least for now.

A right click on the map brings up a small context menu “Print map” which indeed does print the map, but leaves a little to be desired. Some objects won’t print, or will only half-print, but as a stop-gap measure, it’s not too bad. I’ll work on trying to find a better solution, but at the moment, and for a one-click solution, it’s better than nothing.

Power users will, of course, grab a screenshot and use their favourite image-processing software as usual…

Rob

I am puzzled by this post because I print the range derived maps for the area around our base before any SOTA holiday. I print directly from the Firefox Print in the drop-down menu.

In fact I was thinking of asking Rob if the headers could be suppressed in some way as they waste up to a third of the available page.

Thanks again for a most useful suite of tools.
73,
Rod

Thanks for the new option Rob at present I use the standard “Snipping tool” (it’s actually called that) in Windows 7/8/10 and then past into a wordpad document, adjust and print as needed for my activation planning documents. That way I can easily pick what I need off the screen and “mix and match” from various sources. I think most here will be able to do this with very little computer skills.

Ed.
P.S. of course on other Operating Systems, there are different screen shot/editing programs but the principal is the same.

Actually, there’s probably the answer right there - all I need to do is create a set of CSS rules for media print, which would suppress the other stuff, and just leave the map as the only thing visible to the print-job. It’s just I’ve never had occasion to do this… I’ll play around a little more and see what I can come up with.

Rob

Yes, that does it. A small simple CSS file now suppresses the headers, left-hand tools bar and the footer bar when printing. All you need to do is tell the browser to print the page. Works in the main and range pages so far.

Rob

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Wonderful. Many thanks, Rob,

73,
Rod

Suppression of all non-map objects when printing the page from the browser, now works in all SMP mapping pages.

In other words, when printing any of the SMP mapping pages from the browser, only the map area (and any dialog windows you have left open) will be printed.

2 Likes

Another small enhancement to the SMP main page - a handy zoom tool to complement those offered by Google maps. This new tool enables the user to quickly zoom into an area of interest without having to go through the, at times tedious, process of zooming and dragging the map to get to the area one is interested in.

How does it work? - simple:

  • move the mouse to a point on the map representing one corner of the area of interest;
  • press the mouse RIGHT button and hold it down;
  • then, while still holding the right mouse button down, drag the mouse pointer to the opposite corner of the area of interest - a coloured rectangle will appear to show the area to be zoomed to;
  • release the right mouse button to initiate the zoom;
  • pressing the <Esc> button during this process will cancel the action.

That’s all there is to it… I’d be interested to know whether people find this of use, or to know if it doesn’t work as intended (hint: you may need to refresh the browser window when viewing the SMP main page).

Rob

EDIT: this new zoom tool now added to the SMP range and tracks pages…

2 Likes

:laughing:

SMP just keeps improving, great tool, thanks for the work!

Great feature, especially when looking to see if I can activate a second summit in the same area.

The most valuable resource that we all have is TIME. By being able to combine summits in one trip (my closest summits are around an hours drive away from here - the more interesting ones 2 to 3 hours). It can in some cases work out that although the trek up to the first summit is 90 minutes or more, a linking track to another SOTA summit may be only 30 minutes and even allow a loop track back around to the starting point. By being able to enlarge a group of summits with this new feature - I have the chance to plan an activation of summits, which I probably would not activate if I planned each one separately.

73 Ed.