Google revamps Street View interface

The Street View's mascot, Pegman, gets some new prominence for using Street View.

(Credit: Google)

Google has given Street View a major new look.

One big change: to activate the Google Maps feature, you drag the "Pegman" character off the top of the zoom slider and drop him where you want to see. It's a lot faster than enabling Street View through a drop-down then clicking where you want to go.

Next, the view itself is larger, filling the whole screen instead of just a window. The higher resolution lets you zoom in more closely. And it works: one trouble spot I use for reference--a dark restaurant sign near my house that I once couldn't read with Street View when trying to give a friend directions--now is visible.

In the lower-right corner of the Street View, there's now a mini-map, and clicking on its upper-left corner zooms the map into a nifty split-screen view with the map below and Street View above.

Well done except for one thing: with either the mini-map or the split screen, the Street View goes black on me when I'm using the latest version of Chrome, 0.4.154.25. (See screenshots below for what it looks like initially and after breaking.) It works fine in Firefox 3.1 beta 1. Is it just me? Comment below if you're seeing problems.

Also, I don't know if this is new, but I just discovered keyboard shortcuts (one of my all-time favorite things). You can pan the view left and right with the A and D keys and tilt up and down with W and S.

For details--and a miniature Pegman gallery that shows various holiday-themed Easter eggs--check Google's Lat-Long blog post from programmer Stephane Lafon and user experience designer Andy Szybalski on Tuesday.

Street View's split screen, when it's working.

(Credit: Google)

Street View's split screen, when it's broken in Chrome.

(Credit: Google)

[cnet.aaron]

You could always use the arrow keys to pan around in Street View in FF on a Mac.

[eddydecolombia]

crome needs help!

[PenguinOpus]

Latest version of Chrome (0.4.154.25) works for me.

[PenguinOpus]

Correction, if you go to split screen and then exit split screen I see it on the latest Chrome. It appears to be a bug in Chrome 0.4.x+Flash10. Bug filed with Chrome.

[Shankland]

Do you have a bug ID for the problem? I don't see it at the Chrome issues site, but I'd like to track it.

http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/list

[ktswami]

Interesting UI change...seems to mimic the wide-screen Street View in iPhone v2.2.

Works great and renders really fast in Opera v9.62 for Mac.

[parthushukla]

chrome ver. 0.4.154.25 works for me when I use split screen. See if you have latest flash v. 10

[Manhattan2]

Google puts solar panels on their rooftop to look green, then they drive all around in circles to take pictures. In both cases they are hurting the environment. There is a better way to do solar "Solar Transfer" and there is a better way to image the planet "GPSimaging.com" Send us an email we will explain how Google could be doing better.

[whois101]

Why is there always that urge to break something that works fine. The new interface to get to the street view is far less straight forward, since the blue lines only show up when you jerk on that little puppet. Now you have to zoom, try, zoom some more, try some more, to see if there's actually street view in the general area. Just more work. Why not keep the on/off toggle. Would have been much easier. This is more or less a Vista-fication by Google. The seem to be a bit out-of-touch lately.

[Mapper99]

Cool! Now, I can't wait untill they get the UK Street View Data Online!

htp://streetviewgallery.corank.com

[Kingtakesqueen]

With Google maps, Bing or any of the satellite maps available, or fall I knwo could be just one big one they share. Anyone have an idea of the timeliness of the photos are?

I cannot and its impossible to be live, but how recent are they usually or are they archived?

Any info would mucho apreciato.



Thanks

A pawn in this game of love life and laughter


Kingtakesqueen