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More Work on Earth Bridge

I've been coding away on version 2.0 of Earth Bridge. I've gotten some really great (and fast) help over at Stack Overflow.

Having been subscribed to many usability blogs for the past several years is definitely paying off. I will reserve judgment on whether the interface I'm creating is "good" or not until other people have seen it, but I definitely like it much better than the old interface.

Regarding the interface, this is an especially tough application to create. First off, I'm not a UI designer. I'm a developer. (If you don't know why that's a problem, go read this.) What is trying to get out of my head is something like this. It's taking all my effort to prevent that kind of atrocity from happening. Unfortunately, the nature of this application is such that it only actually does one thing. However, there are about 200 ways of configuring how it does that one thing. So when it comes down to it, the whole UI of the application is just a glorified interface to a config file. So I really mean it when I say it's tough to create the interface. I'm doing my darnedest to keep from unleashing a UI atrocity on the users.

Replies

Hi, great to hear you're getting back to work on Earth Bridge, I love that software! There is quite a following in the offroading community: we have something cool going setting up rugged car PCs with Google Earth, GPS receiver, Earth Bridge, and GE Voyager - and then going wheeling and stealth camping in all the places where commercial GPS systems just show white space :-)
I don't know whether you take suggestions, but I'd love the software even more with a couple of additions:
1. Integrate a simpler version of GE Voyager (I have some ideas)
2. Add a feature to swap out GE cache files representing pre-cached areas
3. If possible make the gps connection more stable/robust
4. Make sure all tracks are not erased if the connection gets lost or the software restarts
5. Add a tiny status widget that can stay on top and just shows GPS reception status
If you're interested I'd be happy to add some detail to these suggestions via email and of course I'd be more than happy to betatest.
cheers
Psychlone - Aug 15, 2008 @ 7:01 PM - Permanent Link
Thanks for the great feedback! I just now posted the link to the feedback forum I created for this next version of Earth Bridge, so that should help aggregate all these great ideas. I'm very interested in making this next version be a great upgrade from the first version.
Dylan - Aug 15, 2008 @ 8:34 PM - Permanent Link
Hi Dylan,
how is it going with the new Earth Bridge, it's been 3 months since your last entry about updating it?
Meanwhile, Tamer Louis and I have been updating Google Earth Voyager to a version 5.5. Among the nice features is the ability to work with multiple caches (for large areas).
Keep us posted :-)
Psychlone - Nov 11, 2008 @ 1:18 PM - Permanent Link
Hi Dylan, it's been awfully quiet here, hope all is well. Are there any plans to restart development of Earth Bridge? I'm getting ready to shell out for GooPS 2.4 Pro (released 1/2/09) but won't if a new Earth Bridge comes out soon. What do you think?
Psychlone - Feb 14, 2009 @ 5:16 AM - Permanent Link
I like EarthBridge. I am waiting latest version of earthbrigde. Can you send me it's source code. I want to help to you for it's developing process
nsgnc - Feb 26, 2009 @ 8:06 PM - Permanent Link
Hi Dylan, we used EB in Tunisian Sahara. It worked properly despite one frequently occuring error report - you had to reload in GE then. Nevertheless it's my favorite add on. Though GE 5.0 comes with an GPS function, but that offers only poor features comparing to EB.
bennemsi - Mar 9, 2009 @ 1:32 AM - Permanent Link

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