Route Builder Quirks

In the strictest sense I think the below are bugs, but the relative importance/priority is so low as to be suggestions of something to work on when there’s nothing else to do as opposed to anything serious to chase. I’m listing three items only in case they are related in the logic or in the same coded module.

  1. There is some sequence of events where the route builder looses track of whether it is in “straight line” or “follow roads” mode. I wish I could be more helpful on the interactions leading up to it, but I’ve stumbled on it a several times. Its not crippling as you just have to remember the displayed glyph is opposite of what you are actually doing, but it otherwise works fine in this regard.

  2. As impressive and extremely useful as the ‘undo’ capability is, there are some sequence(s) of events where the ‘stack’ of things to undo seems to get corrupted. Frequently, I have to click ‘undo’ 2-3-4 times to get it to remove the most recent ‘leg’ of the route. I have no idea what it thinks it is un-winding. Similar, but potentially not the same exact problem, there are times (after some undo-ing and perhaps other interactive events) when you click to add a new ‘leg’ endpoint to a partial route and the drawn start of that additional leg is disjoint with the already drawn sequence of legs. Also not crippling as it has a workaround where you just trash the existing route and start over.

  3. I agree with others who have suggested the Route-Builder route color be different than the red node finder icons color. I end up clearing all node finder icons, adding another few segments to the route and then telling the node finder to hit the database yet again (not performance friendly). 0x00FF00 (a web portable green) appeals to my sensibilities to avoid confusion with existing-track blue, but I’m the absolute wrong guy to be choosing an appropriate color.

Problem #2 is a big bugaboo for me as well.

I’ll add one that I’ve mentioned in the past: #4: the route builder menu on LifeMap is right next to the CityStrides drop-down menu and if you click it by accident the route in progress is lost. Also, the trash can ‘delete route in progress’ button is right next to ‘undo’ and I’ve hit it accidentally many times. There should either be a “are you sure you want to abandon the route in progress?” popup to prevent this in both cases.