What's new on Geocaching Australia

[pjmpjm]

planning your trip becomes easier (longer routes for a full day travel) faster output (remember only GCA caches are set to GPX files) and reduce the time that our server spends doing these calculations

This is great!

Many thanks!

[caughtatwork]

The Latest Logs page is used to display the latest logs (der).

We have pagination solution where the latest logs are broken down and shown in pages of 50 logs per page.
We had been restricting the pagination solution to the last 1 week, 2 weeks, 3 weeks, 4 weeks or all weeks.
In order to determine the final page count we needed to trawl the database to get the count of logs matching the criteria, then go to the database again to grab the actual logs. This was a bit of a slow process.

From today, the Latest Logs page uses a different paging solution.
You will no longer see the prev / next links at the top and bottom of the page.
What happens now is that the at the end of each page, there is a "Next Page" button to display the next page of 50 Latest Logs.
Rather than use the traditional method of showing the next page of logs by returning to the server, we are invoking an AJAX method which simply appends the next set of logs to the screen. You can read more on AJAX here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_%28programming%29

The original implementation of this code last night was actually an infinite scrolling solution whereby simply scrolling to the end of the page would invoke the AJAX code to bring down the next set of logs. i.e. No buttons to push. That caused some behavioural issues with the number of invocations to the log loader and had a detrimental impact on performance of the server. I will continue to look into how this can be addressed but at the moment, we're putting a "speed hump" by way of a next page button to slow down the calls to the database.

This action was taken in response to this request in the forums. http://forum.geocaching.com.au/viewtopi ... 83#p175983 I decided to try it out on the Latest Logs page first as that a simpler process to refine should things go wrong. I expect to implement the AJAX invoker on the cache logs shortly.

From the other thread mentioned.

Because there are over 900 found logs the NSW Survey Marks locationless seems to take a long while to load now (no wonder!)
http://geocaching.com.au/cache/ga0094
I'm on a fairly fast connection but it takes at least 15-20 seconds to load up and sometimes freezes. I don't know if there's another locationless with as many logs but perhaps it can be divided into pages or maybe do the GC thing and only show the last X logs.

Not critical but something to watch out for.

This has now been addressed.
The new AJAX call to the database will show 100 logs to start with. That should keep the initial load time down.
From there you will see at the bottom of the page a button to get another 100 logs (Next Page).
You can continue to do that until you run out of logs.
This has a slight unfortunate side effect of impacting the link to your own log if it hasn't appeared on the page yet. Not quite sure how to deal with this.

[gmj3191]

I like this "Go to first unread post" feature, which seems to have
mysteriously popped up on the forum index. Well done those responsible.

[caughtatwork]

In response to this request:
http://forum.geocaching.com.au/viewtopi ... 71#p176971

I know some icons on the map are GCA only eg Trigs and movable but hard to see what tradition and multi etc are GCA without clicking on them.

GCA caches now show up as dark blue. Other site caches remain in red.

So when you view a Google Map of caches, GCA caches that are unfound will show up as dark blue coloured icons. Non-GCA caches that you have not found will show up as red. Caches that you have found will remain green, caches you have DNF'd will remain brown and your owned caches will remain light blue, regardless of which site they are listed on.

Thanks to mtrax for the suggestion and we hope that the different coloured icons will help you identify if there are any GCA caches in the area you are looking at.

[tatty]

The new colours on the map look great, much easier to spot GCA caches now.
Is there a way to ignore the opencaching duel listed caches though? As on the map it looks like I have not found a cache I have already found because it is duel listed and I don't really want to sign up to yet another site.

[caughtatwork]

Not en masse. You can ignore an individual cache.

[tatty]

No worries, thanks for the quick reply.

[Captain Terror]

Loving the idea that GCA caches now appear in blue on the Australian maps. Makes cache planning much easier for me anyways Top thinking folks!

[caughtatwork]

Thanks for the feedback. This enhancement was brought to you by a member suggestion.

If you have an idea, feel free to fire up a new thread and suggest it. We bought loads of pixels and we're in no danger of running out.

[nutwood]

I like the different colour thing. Excellent idea. Is there an explanation somewhere ( other than above) of what the different colours indicate? Wasn't hard to figure out so I never really went looking but I'm just curious as to whether I missed the explanation?

[caughtatwork]

Er, no there isn't
If you would like to fire up a page in the wiki to start with, then we can all add value to the whole community.
http://wiki.geocaching.com.au/wiki/Main_Page
Log in with your GCA username and password.

[caughtatwork]

In line with the suggestion made in this thread.
http://forum.geocaching.com.au/viewtopi ... rd#p167261

The dashboards are now "tabbed".
http://geocaching.com.au/dashboard/au/vic/

You see the headings, then when you click on them the data for that section is displayed.
It keeps the page neater and not so much scrolling. Now of course, you just have more clicking.
Sometimes if you click a heading before the page has fully loaded things can be a little weird, so please be patient.

I did try the accordion method as suggested, but it was but ugly and this one looks a little neater.

[Bewilderbeest]

In line with the suggestion made in this thread.
http://forum.geocaching.com.au/viewtopi ... rd#p167261

The dashboards are now "tabbed".
http://geocaching.com.au/dashboard/au/vic/

You see the headings, then when you click on them the data for that section is displayed.
It keeps the page neater and not so much scrolling. Now of course, you just have more clicking.
Sometimes if you click a heading before the page has fully loaded things can be a little weird, so please be patient.

I did try the accordion method as suggested, but it was but ugly and this one looks a little neater.

I like it, much cleaner. Thanks

[Laighside Legends]

Thanks for the hover-over button style on the Query page (hopefully this makes sense)
Not sure when or how they got there but there great

[caughtatwork]

With the advent of widescreens, the data for a lot of line based information spreads further than standard peripheral vision. As such, when you have a wide screen containing a line list of things (caches, queries, swaggies, etc), as you move your mouse over the detail, the line under your mouse is now highlighted.

e.g.
http://geocaching.com.au/caches/gca/au/
http://geocaching.com.au/my/query/

This shoudl allow you to read across the page and the detail on the whole line with ease.
This change was released last night.