thebruce0

To expand a bit, Geosphere has the ability to display the proximity circles as an overlay on the map, and it's also set to only show on physical waypoints - posted coordinates for physical cache types, and multi-stage and final waypoints. (reference points, parking/trailhead/virtual etc are not relevant for proximity concerns and so don't show the circle). It's a very useful feature, especially when planning for cache placement in a busier area.

Oh right, the red filing cabinet. When they were choosing the new icons I wasn't a fan of that one However, disable is also red, so by colour alone it would be confusing. Well the asy solution is just to use the same icons as the website

Yeah red seems 'bad'. Archived is more neutral. I'd Archived should be black, and notes grey. Consistency would imply NM would be red or orange for potential problem, and Owner Maintenance perhaps green, good-to-go.

The way I see it, GSAK's presentation of the logs has a different context. As said, it's more a recent generalization of the cach "health". As opposed to a list of recent logs in the context of "these are logs that have been posted most recently". In the latter case, consistency in icons is more important, because that's the context - specific log types. In the GSAK health context, red/green when grouped closer together imply something different, something collective, and so I'd say it's ok there to not use say yellow/blue smileys and frowneys. In the cache detail card lists, eg, on one line the most recent logs, I'd say remain consistent with official icons. If it were presenting them in a different context, a different method (which btw can also ignore notes which I believe GSAK does) then red/green makes more sense. IMO.

Or provide selectable or customizable icon sets ;P

Yes it would be tedious to fix problem characters in an xml as you'd have to edit it to something else, then parse it again. It could happen any number of times until the parser successfully loads the entire file. It'd be nice if it were possible to skip invalid character errors, but that opens a whole can of development worms

Or maybe, 1. Post as Log Now 2. Save to Field Notes Now 3. Save to Field Notes Later 4. Save as Local Field Note (never upload) That way it's one option to select, not a hierarchy of multiple options. Save as an app default, but allow overriding individually when making a note in the app.

I import my Finds PQ into Geosphere to keep my past logs populated (with logs submitted via web only), and to keep all the cache info in-app. That's the way around it there.

True, just feels like there's no indication that tapping a PQ downloads it. Wasn't intuitive on my first use, and with Bmklists having a different functionality but with the same display and lead up, just irks me. Elsewhere I might expect to see a download icon to the right, or something that just indicates an action that happens when tapping a row other than 'drilling down' which is what I'd expect. gah. Please don't take my comments the wrong way, I hate getting detail oriented to that level I feel nit-picky. it's your design, just offering my experience coming in from a different perspective. /:) ... Ah, I think I see why I expected differently on the PQ list. There is an icon to the right already. It's the right carat which implies moving a step forward, viewing more detail, drilling down - it's the same icon on both Bookmark Lists and PQs. What if for the PQ list it was the download icon instead of the right carat? That's a UI style used pretty often, and would to me make more sense to indicate what the row tap does.

Yeah that was a rough addition to smooth out in geosphere. The confusion was because the PQ data is as-of PQ generation date, whereas if using the API, the caches contained in the PQ are still as of generation but the data itself downloaded from the API is current. That is to say, if you generated a PQ 3 days ago, and new caches are published that weren't there 3 days ago, they won't show in the PQ if you download it (via any method) today - even though you get logs on those older caches that were posted today. It was GS's combining of temporal PQs with current API functions that makes it confusing That was one reason I like the ZIP download - no confusing data, as long as you realize that all the data is only as of the generation date. If you want current data in a PQ, you need to generate the PQ right now, then download it (by zip or api). No way around that in any app. At least until the API allows generating the PQ and downloading it together (or maybe just uses the PQ search parameters to do a current API search and download). But anyway. I haven't used the ZIP pq download for a while. That import ability was good mainly for downloading the My Finds PQ, which as I recall isn't provided by the API - have to generate the PQ then manually download the ZIP from the web and import into the app.

Excellent. Just seems odd that you can't do anything by tapping a row when in Edit mode. Having the options show with that to me is very intuitive; same effect as tapping Options on the swipe. (and there are a number of other functions that can be accessed via different methods already; eg - swipe to tap Delete, or Edit+ (-) +Delete ... actually, I thought tapping the (-) would just delete, but it just does the same as the swipe action; meaning you can Edit-> (-) ->'Options' to get the flyup, but you can't Edit-> Row-tap to get the flyup) Sorry, just commenting thoughts out loud (webapp developer here, UI/workflow is what I do all day long, heh)

In this case I was more referring to this difference: * Bookmarks: Tap a Row -> View on a Map/List, Options [Save to List, Export GPX] * PQ: Tap a Row -> Auto-download to an Offline List The PQ auto-download to a list seems quite sudden, and it can't be stopped, potentially using a lot of data. I like the flow of the Bookmarks listing. ..ooh, another option for the PQ list: Go to the PQ web page (in-app or link) to be able to toggle generation of PQs since afiak the API doesn't provide that function (that was a request I made in Geosphere and it's become invaluable for mobile PQ generation) (yeah I know, I'll get on that bug tracker/request area :))

Ok so theoretically you can keep adding to it until you've reached 4000. That was more just a matter of curiosity Geosphere would have the same API limit to the search, it just adds the map boundary as a limit if you use the Map search option rather than the Current Location/Home/Target center point. Cachly does have this option. When navigating to the cache there is a button with a target on it. Right, on the dedicated navigation page; I was more referring to having the 'Target' selected, which can be viewed on other maps, so you can zoom to the extent of the target from your current location while still seeing other caches. I'm not a fan of (in any app, not specifically this one :)) a dedicated navigate view to a single cache, where if you leave you have to go back to the cache and navigate again. The target selection that's 'sticky' in Geosphere was a huge plus, imo, with the option to view the target in a Navigate module. But again, that's a bigger divergence from the use mentality of Cachly and other similar apps. Not a big deal.

I'd really like to be able to sort alphabetically. It doesn't make much sense to me as is. I've never seen bookmark lists anywhere sorted by last updated date; that's not even visible anywhere... it just doesn't feel right, especially without seeing the date it's being sorted by. A big list of sort options would be overkill, but providing two options - last updated, and alpha - really shouldn't be that hard... right? /:)

A few other points playing around... lots to take in 1. Love the speed of loading new caches. That's a huge plus, IMO. 2. If loading from the map center and there's an overlap of already-loaded caches, does it re-load those and count towards the daily limit? (I presume so per the API method) 3. On changing a search option, the load runs again automatically; I didn't expect that as I was just modifying an option and was then going to change the location of the map to run the search there, not right where it was when I hit "Done". Can it not auto-run the search if it's just the search options that's changed? 4. Coming from Geosphere, we had loads of use cases of various search strategies we might use to populate an area we're caching in, usually affected by what we wanted to see, or wanted to avoid. For example, if there's a powertrail in an area, a standard radius search would get flustered by such a high density of caches in one spot that we may want to ignore. Or we want to grab only the caches along the trail and not the whole region. So we requested a few other search options than just map-center-radius. ...Without getting too complicated for now: * Can we have a kind of limit to map dimensions toggle? For example, I might zoom in to a stretch of a trail and perform a search to get just the caches within the map I'm looking at; or, knowing there's a dense trail and I want the park a few blocks away I might center there and keep the map out of frame so that I'm not loading the 100 caches on the trail along with the sparser ones nearby that I do want. The map limiter made it easier to load caches / pan map / load caches / pan map / etc... I recently did this for a major 4 day road trip, eventually importing 11000 caches into Geosphere along our driving route, highly customized (more flexible than the driving route PQ feature Groundspeak offers, though admittedly more time consuming). 5. I do notice that the "..." apears in the load icon when the next search would expand from the same center point, and disappears when the map is panned indicating a new search. Is there a limit to the distance the search will progress? Not sure if that's an API thing. In Geosphere the option to load the next 20 or 100 caches at a time would continue until all caches are loaded that were within the map window when that search process began (even after panning, it wouldn't reset until you began a new search)' 6. The "X" to clear the map - I irked when I hit it and didn't get a confirmation after loading a large area... just lost my entire scanning and search accidentally, so now I have to do it all over again, using more API calls. Can there be an "Are you sure?" confirmation before clearing out perhaps hundreds or thousands of map pins? /:) ... A couple little more complex features, based on some stuff that Cachly doesn't have (and may not, at least for a while) which I find quite useful: 7. Geosphere doesn't use the exclusive 'Navigate to Cache' method that a number of apps employ - instead you choose a cache item to select as the current 'Target' (overrides the pin colour to red instead of the cache type's). In doing so, it provides a bit more flexibility, such as easily choosing a center point for searches, filtering, listing, distance viewing and whatnot. It also means it's easier to visually spot where your target cache is in relation to other caches nearby, instead of showing a map with only the cache being navigated to. 8. Zoom options - having a Target cache makes this more relevant, but Geosphere allows you to quickly select a zoom region. * Your current location (pretty standard), the extent of map items (zoom out to see everything currently visible), the target cache (like current location but at the target pin), and current-location-with-target (easily see for navigation, and also allows to set the view so the zoom will auto-adjust while you move closer/farther from it - great for driving and hiking). I'll post more as more comes to mind Trying to be 'open minded' about the fundamental differences in use between geosphere and cachly (not a bad thing, just different). There are loads of features I love in Cachly that Geosphere doesn't have which I want to use, but it means rewiring my thought process from the ground up to come at the caching career (which Geosphere contains) from a different use methodology ;P