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Problems with area filtering

I have noticed that the area filtering when you are browsing other people's activities on Garmin connect is a little patchy. For example, if you enter "New Zealand" as the search string you only seem to get activities around the middle of New Zealand (e.g. lower North Island and Upper South Island). I presume that this is because the site geocodes New Zealand to a fixed point and then searches within a fixed radius around this point.

However, the point is that it results in a pretty poor user experience. It would be nice if the user could control the search radius and it should be pretty easy to implement :)

Thanks
Andrew

0 seilogramp over 16 years ago

For example, if you enter "New Zealand" as the search string you only seem to get activities around the middle of New Zealand

This is because the map is focused on the 10 most recent activities in New Zealand. If you click to the next page the map will move to those 10 activities.

0 ABABNZ over 16 years ago

I thought this might be the case initially but I have checked again and gone right back through the history and there are no activities in Auckland or Christchurch for example that make it into the "New Zealand" list.

So I do think there is a problem with the filtering as described in my first post.

0 seilogramp over 16 years ago

I see your point, but is there a reason you have to search "New Zealand?" Why not enter "Aukland" in the search box? I search for Aukland and pull up several activities. Also, you can drag the map around to change the focus of your search. If I search for USA, then I get the geographic center of the USA rather than the entire country. But that is not usually what I'm searching. Putting in something more specific would give me much better results.

0 DW152 over 16 years ago

Here's another twist on this. I live in northern VA, near Washington DC. If I enter my hometown (Springfield), I get 10 activities that are tied to Springfield, but I don't get anything for any neighboring communities, even though they may only be a few miles away. I tried entering "northern Virginia," but that didn't return anything. So I guess the only way to find activities in my area would be to type in each community? That would be pretty tedious. Furthermore, I live close to Maryland and Washington DC, but likewise the only way to find activities there would be to separately enter those areas, which again is tedious. Perhaps a better way would be to have the option to search a user-selectable radius around a central location, which is a way a lot of store locators are implemented on web pages, e.g., find a Borders within 25 miles of a certain zipcode.

Another odd thing is if I simply type "Virginia," the search returns a few activities in NC.

0 Former Member over 16 years ago

Andrew and DW152,

You're right, we have a bit of quirkiness in our location searches. I recommend executing a location search of "New Zealand" or "Springfield, VA" to get your search close to the desired location, and then panning/zooming the map until you reach your desired location. Clicking "Search" again will execute a "Current Map View" of this area.

The limitations have been noted and will be improved upon in the near future. Thanks for the feedback, guys!

0 ABABNZ over 16 years ago

BWOSKOW - Thanks for the confession that you guys have a problem here. Looking forward to it being fixed in a subsequent release.

Thanks
Andrew