Hello everybody!
We're getting closer to the end of the year, and we have exciting news to share! After a whole year of revamping Interactive Maps, as we previously announced we have something else to include that will make everyone happy: we are improving the performance of Maps, changing the internal engine to use the canvas system, and enhancing the rendering of markers.
Throughout these last years, we agreed with the feedback from our Community that the experience with maps using a significant number of markers was not the ideal one. Even if we offered some tools like clustering, we felt we should explore other options to optimize the feature. By using this new engine, we ensured all the previous issues - like showing all the markers, moving the map or using the zoom - were solved.
Some days ago, we already launched an initial testing phase, with a sample group of volunteer communities (including maps with a lot of markers) and also another group of random wikis. These last days we had the chance to test the performance and communicate any kind of issues, but fortunately everything has been going well and we're now ready for a full implementation of these performances for all the wikis using Maps, starting today.
If you don't know yet what this implementation means and which changes you can notice, don't worry! We have prepared a series of videos, performing the same maps but by using the old engine and the new one, so you can perfectly compare how the maps work so much better now!
The next two videos from the Kyrat map (Far Cry Wiki) show the difference when you show all the markers. The first one (left) shows the old engine, and you can see how when you're hiding and later showing the marker categories, it takes a few seconds for the markers to load and appear (watch the position of the mouse to realize how long it takes since the user clicked on the button). If you see the second video (right), with the performance improvements, this delay doesn't happen anymore.
The next videos are from The Center map (ARK Wiki). In the first one (left), using the old engine, when you're moving the map to see a different part of it, the background image is properly displayed, but it takes a few seconds for the markers placed in that area. In the second video (right), with the performance improvements, this delay doesn't happen anymore.
When you're moving the mouse over the markers, a tooltip appears. For maps with a significant number of markers, like the Waldenbach Shire map (Stein.world Wiki), you can see in the first video (left), using the old engine, that it takes a few seconds for the tooltip to appear, and you could even be a different position where there is a different marker. In the second video (right), you can see that with the performance improvements, the tooltip for the related marker appears instantly.
When it comes to the use of the zoom tool, in the first video (left), using the old engine, you can notice a delay of some seconds to zoom in or out the image (watch the position of the mouse to realize how long it takes since the user clicked on the button). In the second video (right), with the performance improvements, the load time since we did the action is minimal.
On the other hand, you can guess that while all the mentioned examples have been shown for desktop devices, the old engine also experienced similar issues on mobile devices. In the next videos you can also see similar performances on the old engine (first video, in the left) and also the new canvas engine (second video, right).
Alongside these rendering improvements, we also have two related updates. On the one hand, as we've mentioned we used the clustering tool as a temporary solution. Nevertheless, grouping the markers by proximity was not the best plan, and also the feedback from our Community told us that we should work on something different. With the canvas implementation, we are also retiring the clustering tool for markers.
As we've seen, grouping markers is not necessary anymore, but in addition, the clustering tool also had performance issues on mobile devices. Using the Ultra Custom Night Roster map (Ultra Custom Night Wiki) as an example, you can see some issues in the first video (left), while in the second video (right) you will see the canvas engine working properly.
Furthermore, this implementation is also bringing us new features, some of them already requested by our beloved community of users. The old engine used to display tooltips on the right side, which wasn't optimal for some uses and could be invisible. Starting today, marker popups and tooltips are automatically aligned to the best position based on the available space.
And before wrapping up, on a final note, we want to remind you that these improvements are not compatible with the use of the custom script MapsExtended, since the script supports only the old engine (displaying the markers using HTML). Wikis currently using the script will not receive the marker rendering update. If your wiki is currently using the script but you want to enable canvas, you can turn the script off and request us to implement the new engine. The rest of communities, including new ones, will be using the canvas engine and the custom script won't be loaded.
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