Zoomy Map

Today we deployed a website update that achieved something we’ve wanted for a long time: no zoom limits! For so long, we had it so you could only zoom the map out so far - this was due to performance issues related to loading thousands of locations on the map (and in the results section). We spent the last month tackling this issue. It might not necessarily be done, and it’s certainly not perfect, but we think it’s cool!

The performance issues were overcome by doing these things: switching to a different method for displaying map data and markers (from “markers” to symbol layers); and limiting the number of results that show up on the left hand side.

We also changed the icon symbology. You can see a key for it in that screenshot. The icons change as you zoom in out, and they start showing the number of machines as you zoom in more (sometimes these labels overlap and it’s ugly).

Due to the nice and lean way the data is being constructed, AND because we host our own map and don’t have to worry about “map load quotas”, we made it so the map autoloads stuff when you first visit it. No more wondering what to search. We used to have a “near” button that you could click and the browser would request your location and then show nearby locations. Now we switched to an IP geolocation database, provided by MaxMind. We store that ourselves and do a lookup based on your public IP address, then we zoom super far out and show locations in the area. If your IP doesn’t have a matching lat/lon, we fallback to showing the United States.

We hope all this makes the map more fun and easier to explore!