Our Park.it Android app just got a great new update - quick and easy location picking. It’s now so easy to pick locations to park and offer parking that it’s tempting to tap in just to see what’s going on nearby. Thank you very much to everyone who chimed in with their problems and hopes so far! We couldn’t have done it without your input.
When the new location picking screen first comes up the map and cross hairs will be centered on the location of the cell phone tower you are currently using. This information is available on Android devices where it is turned on nearly instantly. Many times it is close enough to where you are that you can just immediately tap the “Find Parking” button and see all the garages and offered spots right where you need them. People who used our previous versions pointed out that their favorite apps had this near instant nearby browsing capability and we’re happy that we can now offer it as well!
The location can be adjusted easily and visually by dragging your finger across the map. This will pan the map and move where the cross hairs are centered. Zoom controls also appear when doing this. Panning like this is great if the location just needs a quick adjustment or you are planning a short drive instead of idling in front of a fire hydrant at your destination. People reported that they didn’t always know the address of where they are going, so this new method lets you specify where you are going visually. Panning seemed simpler to use than dragging a marker in our tests during development. Dragging the marker requires both adjusting the map and dragging the marker around whereas with centered cross hairs it is all one action with fewer parts.
For more precise use of your current location, we also offer a GPS button. This will attempt to use the Android device’s GPS receiver to lock on to the satellites and get your exact location. This was also something that people using the app requested the ability to use. It’s great for when you are offering a spot and standing right next to where you parked before heading into a store for a coffee. When it works it can be the most precise way to specify a location and doesn’t require typing anything in. It does take some time, can be interfered with by buildings, and sometimes doesn’t achieve a lock, however. That’s why the cell phone tower location is used by default instead.
Another precise method is the search button. This allows typing in a destination and searching for its location using Google. It can be slow and painful to type things in on a phone, but this can let you jump right to where you are going, even if you don’t know where it is exactly. This was the only method of picking a location in the previous versions. We did have some people report issues using this method where they didn’t specify a city. For example, “355 8th AVE” instead of “355 8TH AVE, NY, NY” could bring up the wrong city. Therefore this method does depend on good search requests and results. In the future we may be able to make it smarter: assuming the city you are in for incomplete destinations and maybe offering a list of possible results to help get the right one. For now the new options listed above let users make sure the location is dead on!
Thank you very much for your feedback everyone. Please try the update if you get a chance and keep the great suggestions coming!
For all the Android developers out there, here are some handy references! You can get started showing a map in a screen of your app using this great MapView tutorial. When your app retrieves a location you can center the map using getController and then animateTo methods. To read back a location set by the user panning the map you can call the getMapCenter method.
The Obtaining User Location tutorial should get you set for looking up a user location, be it from the network or GPS provider. Looking up the location of a search string can be done using the Geocoder class. Let’s get some great location-based apps out there that help people out wherever they are!