Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with navigation

iPhone Nav App?

lore — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 10:54:56 -0800

What's the best iPhone turn-by-turn navigation app? I have an un-jailbroken iPhone that I want to use for turn-by-turn GPS-based navigation. What's the best app for this? Or, alternatively, if you've used only one such app, how happy are you with it?

The City That Confuses The Hell Out Of Me

Juliet Banana — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 11:54:44 -0800

If you've ever lived in or visited Chicago and had a good time without getting hopelessly lost, you are cordially invited to post in this thread. Needed: an explanation of the grid system, tips and tricks on navigation, and recommendations for how to find the underground music scene, awesome beers, weird things to explore, and the best Chicago-focused blogs. THE GRID SYSTEM: Whenever someone explains this to me I hear "It starts at State and Madison and blah blah blah blah blah and then you'll know exactly where you are!" Pretend I am a five-year old who was dropped on my tender infant cranium.

HACKS: I bought the Moleskine city notebook which is really helpful because I can pour over maps on the El without looking like a total tourist. I'm also thinking of buying a small cheap compass because I have no sense of direction and I'm too shy to ask the classic question "Which way is the lake?" My boyfriend is getting handed a dollar so he can get one of the CTA Tracker apps for his iPhone. Any other recommendations?

BLOGS: A focus on music, especially local/weird/electronic, is nice, and so are blogs that categorize/tag posts by neighborhood. I'm currently reading Cream Team, Chicagoist, The Chicago Weekly (I really like the focus on non-mainstream arts&music, and neighborhood catagorization), and Gaper's Block. Is There a Cubs Game Today? is a single-serving site, not a blog, but invaluable for a Wrigleyville resident like myself.

PLACES TO CHECK OUT: Metafilter let me know that Hopleaf existed, so I'm sure there's lots of wisdom to be shared.

BACKROUND: I've spent time in Chicago but never lived here, I live spitting distance from Wrigley Field, I will likely work in The Loop, yes I will be at the meet-ups, I like booze and electronica and lowbrow art and limited-run/old/obscure movies, I really liked this previous question though I am 21+, I do not drive and hence will be reliant on the CTA, I am kind of nervous about not knowing anything about the local underground music scene and how to penetrate it.

iPhone website design ideas for a hierarchical site?

AmbroseChapel — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 17:15:43 -0800

iPhone website design ideas for a hierarchical site? I want to make an iPhone version of a listings website. I'm confident about doing the HTML/CSS/Javascript. It's the "listings" bit that's a bit problematic.

The site is very much based on a hierarchical scheme, as in, you choose Springfield, then "Food and Drink", then "Bars" then "Dives" to drill down to Moe's Tavern.

I'm thinking that all of that is normally done with the horizontal space of a bigger screen in a conventional website -- breadcrumbs, the use of a folder-tree left nav using indentation and so on.

Leaving aside "have a very smart search function" how would you approach this?

Suggestions so far include:

an AJAX "wizard" approach as in "I'm looking for [dive] [bars] in [Springfield] where the brackets represent menus launched from buttons
buttons which jump from one branch to another, as in "show me the same category level, only in Shelbyville"

How would you approach this? Am I thinking about it all wrong? Got a good example of a similar problem solved for the iPhone screen?

Oh and technical question -- given access to users' location, can I say "looks like you're in Shelbyville" to auto-fill that stratum of the data? If I come up with a lat-long polygon?

Navigating folders on windows desktop

long — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:59:17 -0800

Is there a way to navigate folders on the Windows XP desktop? That is, I want to be able to click folder A on the desktop and have the desktop switch to displaying folder A's contents.

iPhone or dedicated portable GPS?

thread_makimaki — Mon, 18 May 2009 04:03:14 -0800

I've resisted getting in iPhone so far. However, now I need a good, portable GPS and am wondering whether I should go for an iPhone, or a dedicated GPS. If the latter, which one? I've resisted getting in iPhone so far. However, now I need a good, portable GPS and am wondering whether I should go for an iPhone, or a dedicated GPS. If the latter, which one?

I am travelling a lot these days, so I want a small, compact and portable GPS that I can carry with me when I go for walks in an unfamiliar area. It should also help me navigate when I'm driving, but the portability is more important. In terms of portability the iPhone is a winner, but I have read conflicting things about how good the iPhone is as a GPS device. So, what should I go with - a dedicated device (which one?) or an iPhone? Big bonus points for something with good local maps for Europe, especially France and Switzerland.

No linear tag based navigation examples?

mjm1374 — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 08:05:46 -0800

I need some examples of sites that use cloud tags for (main) navigation and/or have a sort of tear off or pinned navigation system to remember frequently used pages customized to the user. I have been posed with a design challenge to create a large site (200+ pages) with no true fixed navigation. Basically they want something like a search box to start your journey and use predictive type to get pages that match the "Tags" you are search and as you locate pages you can Pin them to you own personal nav tool so you do not need to remember your search terms afterward. The end result is a nonlinear navigation of the site with bookmarks to quickly get you back to the pages you deemed important.

Help me design a navigation interface for my portfolio that people won't hate.

bristolcat — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 08:10:22 -0800

Help me design a navigation interface for my portfolio that people won't hate. I'm redesigning my graphic design portfolio and hoping to come up with a solid way of navigating through the examples of my work. I started to put some extra thought into this when I noticed that when a photographer's site or something similar is linked in the blue, often one of the main complaints is how bad the interface is. I want to avoid this and impress future employers and clients!

So, what things should I avoid? What are some good examples of a solid design? I'd like to hear from you what you think works and doesn't.

If it helps, I'm using Joomla as my CMS. If you have any plug-in recommendations for something that would work well, that would be helpful, but I'm not afraid to cobble together a custom solution either. I'll be displaying website design, print design, photography, logo work and fine art - so, multiple categories.

GPS without the navigation

Bakuun — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 14:00:42 -0800

My Garmin Nuvi (350) won't navigate when I attach it to my car's charger, which is a bummer for obvious reasons. It turns on, but the screen shows an image of it being attached to a PC, and it only goes back to navigation mode if I unplug it. It charges the battery fine, just doesn't do what it's supposed to do when I'm driving and in a bad need of directions. Am I using the wrong car charger? The bit that plugs into the Nuvi from the charger is the same one that's used to plug it into the PC, and I can't find one that's different.

I'm missing something here, right? Right?

How to have exactly the same navigation, the same themes, and yet different backgrounds for three blogs on the same website?

omnigut — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 13:56:30 -0800

I'd like to have a wordpress website with basically three sections, each blogs. Each must have the same layout, same theme, same navigation, but the background image must be different for each blog. Also, I'd like each blog to have links to each of the others. So, the navigation bar at the top of every page would have the following: home | about | blog1 | blog2 | blog 3 | contact. Can wordpress cover it, and if so, how? Like the person in this topic, I like what's going on at The Pioneer Woman. Several blogs on one site.

I have also looked at the advice on how to copy it. First of all, I don't think categories are going to work for me, for on each blog, although I'd like to use the same theme, I'd like them to have different background images.

As for Wordpress Mu, I'm not sure even IT allows me to do what I'm looking for, or whether there's a quick fix. And if it does what I'm looking for, is it as easy to install as Wordpress?

Finally, I'm not proficient with php, and often get lost when reading the explanations of how to do things. However, I'm persevering, and will try to follow whatever you guys write.

I have made a diagram of my preferred architecture here:
http://www.undercoverny.com/architecture.gif

Essentially I'd like the navigation bar to show this:
Home | About | Billiards | Writing | Street Performance | Contact

With the Billiards, Writing, and Street Performance buttons scrolling down to offer "Blog," "Media," etc for their separate sections. The Home, About, and Contact Us pages would be regular pages (not blogs) which have the same background, but not the same background as the blogs. Make sense?

Thanks for your time,
Nick

PS, I have been struggling with Joomla for @#$%ing ages, and can't get the hang of it. As I said, I'm not too good with complicated computer stuff. Should have listened in school...

Which GPS for older driver?

TedW — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 07:45:01 -0800

Navigation system recommendations for my 70-something mom. My wife and I are considering giving my mom a navigation system for Christmas; we both have factory installed navigation in our cars and love it. Although my mom is in her seventies she still makes regular cross-country trips; she just drove from GA to TX and back, for example. She is reasonably tech-savvy for someone her age, but in the past if a electronic gadget has too many features and/or a difficult learning curve she tends not to use it. What are your suggestions for a simple to use portable GPS navigation system? Budget is not a major concern, although I don't see us buying one of the top of the line unit costing over $1000. My wife was looking at a Tom-Tom One 125 but I wonder if that is a little too basic. Thanks for your suggestions.

ok to buy dicontinued garmin nuvi?

Amby72 — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 11:44:17 -0800

Can anyone give me a reason not to get a Garmin nüvi 350 just because it has been discontinued by Garmin? This has the features I want, and we are a bit of a garmin shop at home. Just curious if there is a reason to switch to a different model that replaced it that doesn't have as much of a positive track record. It is online at really reasonable prices, and I would like to get it for my mom who isn't terribly technical.

My GPS didn't know where I was!

pdb — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 10:36:29 -0800

How long does it take for new data to get to the major GPS data providers and for GPS systems to update? I flew into and out of Indianapolis this weekend. The Indianapolis airport authority just opened a brand new terminal at the other end of the airfield a couple weeks ago, replacing the old one, and my GPS couldn't navigate me as I was leaving the terminal because it thought I wasn't on a road.

Once it found me, it got all the exit numbers around the airport right, but the exit names were different because the airport approach is different than it was. None of this caused a problem - the roads are well marked and I knew where I was going - but it did make me wonder how long it takes for GPS data providers to feed updates about new roads, new airports, and whatnot into their systems.

New airports don't come on line every week, so it's not surprising there's a lag I guess, but is the responsibility for providing new map data on the GPS people or the airport-building people?

Interesting GPS applications?

vizsla — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:16:37 -0800

What are useful/fun/collaborative things that can be done with a PDA, computer and a small GPS device these days?

Please help me outsmart the ipod integration feature on my 2008 Infiniti G35.

jjbb — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 13:55:46 -0800

I cannot figure out how to practically scroll through large lists on my iPod when using it through my car's navigation system. I just bought a new 2008 G35 and it came with an ipod adapter which allows you to navigate through your ipod on the car's touchscreen. It seemed like a great feature until I hooked my ipod up and realized it took about 15 minutes of constant scrolling to get through the 563 artists that were listed.

I've searched through various forums and cannot find a fix for this. I thought I could outwit the system by making smart playlists for artists starting with ABC, DEF, GHI, etc. But when I go into those playlists on the car, it goes straight into song titles instead of by artist.

Also, you cannot scroll backwards from A directly to Z.

Any help that would allow me to listen to Van Morrison without 10 minutes of constant scrolling would be much appreciated.

What's the name of this widget?

rodii — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:47:25 -0800

You know the little draggable overview map in Google Maps? What's that kind of UI control called? They're pretty common: the Navigation Palette in Photoshop is the first one I remember encountering. It's a small window with a thumbnail view of a larger chunk of a document (maybe the whole document), with a little rectangle representing the area displayed in the larger window. In Google Maps it's at the lower right (honest, it's there, just click on the arrow); in Photoshop it's a separate palette.

What am looking for is (a) what that kind of widget is called in general (so I can google for more info) and (b) any discussions in the UI or HCI literature with guidelines, best practices, that sort of thing. Thanks!

How can I fix my weirdly rendering navigation tabs?

goodnewsfortheinsane — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 18:30:19 -0800

What's wrong with my CSS that makes top the nav render like this or this on some browsers, and how can I fix it? This is an example of a desired rendering, and here's is the CSS. Thanks in advance, guys & gals!

intelligent navigation

j.p. Hung — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 09:29:58 -0800

Hello all. Building a new website for a company and would very much like to incorporate a navigational system such as exists on the left hand side of this site. I've seen this on quite a few sites now and like the simplicity of it. I'm not sure if it is SSI driven or if it is using ASP.net or java to accomplish it but I think the structure is pretty self-explanatory. As you click through to a new URL, the nav adjusts by making the black arrow orange (to indicate this is the page you are on) and below the orange arrow, new links show up related to that section.

If someone knew of a tutorial on this, it would be greatly appreciated.

Describe Your Pages, WordPress

SansPoint — Sat, 24 May 2008 15:41:48 -0800

How can I make my navigation bar in WordPress look like this, without modifying the WordPress code? I've fallen in love with Dan Cederholm's clean, simple site design, especially the navigation bar. I like the idea of a description under the link, but I can't figger out how to do it in WordPress, except by coding up my own, hard-coded navigation, or to hack the source code, which will most likely make upgrading a pain in the ass.

Is there a plugin I can install that'll do this for me? Should I try another method? Help!

configuration of vista breadcrumb bar/firefox second tab row

lrodman — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 21:15:34 -0800

Is it possible to trim Vista Breadcrumb sections so that the breadcrumb bar doesn't clip off most of the path in long titles? I.e. anything over say, 10 characters gets cropped, so that long paths can be shown? Also, is there a way to fix the glitchy second row of tabs in firefox? I want the second row of tabs to have the same height as the first, so that graphics don't go all screwy.

Can the British just sail right up the Mississippi?

Flunkie — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:52:35 -0800

Can the British just sail right up the Mississippi? The 1783 Treaty of Paris, in which Great Britain officially recognized the United States of America, says, in part:

The navigation of the river Mississippi, from its source to the ocean, shall forever remain free and open to the subjects of Great Britain and the citizens of the United States.

Is this still true? Can a Brit with a boat just sail up and down the Mississippi to his heart's content, without a passport or visa?

I've poked around a bit to see if I could find any subsequent treaty that nullified this article, but wasn't able to. It doesn't seem to be referred to in the Treaty of Ghent (which ended the War of 1812), the Treaty of 1818 (which made various boundary adjustments and such), or the Oregon Treaty (more boundary adjustments and such), and now I'm all out of treaties that popped into my head.

What's a good traffic-enabled GPS navigator?

Tacos Are Pretty Great — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 10:52:37 -0800

Lazyweb, I need help choosing an automotive GPS navigation unit for a directionally-challenged relative. It must receive traffic updates, have an ability to remember programmed routes, and be reasonably easy to install and use. I don't really care if the traffic stuff has a subscription or not, but I do care that it's reasonably thorough for the recipient's neighborhood (a major city in the United States). I've had trouble locating maps that show what roads are actually covered by a given traffic service.

Cost isn't a major factor. Keeping the recipient from getting lost, stuck in traffic and stressed out is.

As it stands, possible contenders are:
TomTom GO 920 T
Garmin StreetPilot c550
Magellan 4050
TeleNav and a new, compatible phone.

But I haven't the foggiest idea if this is a good list, or if any of these are particularly better than the others.

Why are there still lighthouses?

beagle — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 08:40:48 -0800

In this day and age of ubiquitous GPS, why are lighhouses and foghorns still operating? It's cheap, easy, and good operating procedure to carry a GPS device even on a cabin cruiser or sailboat. Larger ships have radar, as well, as a navigational aid. Clearly lighthouses and fog horns are today just backup systems to the electronic tools, and they're rather limited in their effectiveness. Does anyone have an insight into whether lighthouses and foghorns are still considered essential systems? Is any consideration being given to phasing them out completely?

What are some good examples of left-hand sub-menu navigation?

kables — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 17:22:02 -0800

I have a client who wants to reveal its entire site map in the left navigation. What left-hand navigation examples can I show them as an alternative? Information architects and web fanatics: I have a large corporate client who is determined to expose its entire site map through its left hand navigation. In doing so they want three tiers -- one main list with two levels of fly-outs. I'm trying to convince them that hiding at least one level of fly-outs would serve them better, so want to show them examples. Here's what I envision:

-Left nav has n number of items
-User clicks on one of these items
-User goes that page and nav expands down to reveal second-tier items that relate to that facet
-Third-tier items are then accessible as fly-outs from those newly revealed second tier items

Can you think of any sites that do this or similar? Even sites with two levels that expand, sans fly-outs, would be useful examples.

Is satnav an accurate speedometer?

roofus — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 00:49:00 -0800

Could the speedometer built into my car be less accurate than the speed assessed by my GPS satellite navigation? I use TomTom satnav in my car (Smart Pulse) and the speed recorded by the actual speedometer is consistently 2-3mph faster than that recorded by the satnav. Initially I imagined this was just a function of the contour and camber of the road, so that the wheels were covering marginally more ground than the GPS signal would measure. However extensive investigation on very flat straight autobahn sections shows that the satnav maxes out at 84mph, while the car speedometer maxes out at 87mph (the engine is limited). Should I, or could I, get my car speedometer recalibrated?

User navigation taxonomy around keyword

mtstover — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 08:23:11 -0800

I want to have a visual map of how people navigate the web around a particular topic. I am willing to pay for this. For example, around the term "mortgages" I'd like to know all the ways people search and / or navigate to mortgage sites: e.g., some come from search sites, some referred from finance sites, some navigate directly to Citibank, etc. Any advice?