Kristian Karden  on July 5th, 2007

Hi! An excellent extension, except for one thing: when trying the option ‘View Location in G Earth’ I got the message: ‘No results – empty KML file.’ I would be very grateful if you might give any advice with the problem. Thank you.

tones  on July 5th, 2007

Hi Kristain

The kml file is generated by google, and the extension does the following:

1) takes the google domain in your options, default is maps.google.com
2) then adds “/maps?addr=” after
3) then takes the address as it is apppears in the address list
4) finally appends “&output=kml” to the end

Maybe there is a problem with the address and thus google can’t generate the kml? To test this out open the google domain as set in your options and append the info from 2 and 3 above but not 4. Does this open in the google map or does it return an error?

tones

tones  on July 5th, 2007

Hmm, I have made a mistake in code

Should be q=, will update the extension so go to my site and download 0.1.2

Kristian Karden  on July 6th, 2007

Thank you for your answer! Seems to work perfectly now.

Kristian Karden  on July 8th, 2007

Hi again! There seems to be something odd still, sorry to say. I have changed the google maps option to maps.google.co.uk, but when I click on a UK street address on a webpage, I’m directed to a US address in the sidebar, however. Perhaps you might still be kind enough to advise me. Thank you.

tones  on July 8th, 2007

Do you have an example I can check out??

Kristian Karden  on July 8th, 2007

Well, I tried to check out ‘Cannon Street’ on a webpage assuming I’ll get the location of the London street or perhaps a combination of similar streets on the British Isles; instead I was directed to New York. I readily admit that I was testing the extension and might well have made some mistake; thank you for help in advance.

tones  on July 9th, 2007

Hi Kristian

UK address support is very new in the Google geocoder and I am not sure google have ‘turned on’ conflict handling for UK addresses.

You also have to bare in mind that there are millions of addresses in the database, I have no control over which one google picks.

Have had a couple of similar requests for a sort of ‘default address’, one option could be if you set up a default location in the options (eg London), hold down ctrl when you drag and drop and this default London is appended to the address?

That leaves three drag and drop functions rather than the current two:

1) Normal DnD and it just fires off the selection and adds it to the addresslist
2) Shift DnD geocodes the selection and pans but it does not add to addresslist

add this 3rd

3) Ctrl DnD geocodes the selection and adds the default string (eg London) to the end.

tones

tones  on July 9th, 2007

Right, have made a few tweaks for version 0.1.3 which I will put online on my website tonight:

1) Added the ctrl DnD I talked about in previous comment above
2) Added address suggestions list. So for example, if you only search for ‘Cannon Street’ it will open up a list of items at the bottom of the sidebar of all addresses which contain ‘Cannon Street’ in googles database. Click on the one you meant and that is what is added and zoomed to.

Again this depends on the main maps.google.xxx domain, so set to maps.google.co.uk in the options and UK addresses will be returned, .com and US Cannon streets are returned etc.

John Drinkwater  on July 12th, 2007

Hi, great extension as it adds a better way to handle geo data than the current operator stuff (adding userscripts and such..)

I do find the relocation while trying to zoom in with my mouse wheel a little annoying, but otherwise, very tidy.

Could you add another line to the known issues list?
I’m running with the NoScript.net javascript extension, and it blocked the sidebar pane from working until I added stcstm.org onto it’s whitelist.

Many thanks!

tones  on July 13th, 2007

Hi John

Thanks for the spot! Will add to known issues.

The wheel zoom is a little annoying I know. It is a built in google maps function that zooms in/out where ever your cursor happens to be. It would make far more sense if it just zoomed on the map center. I will see if I can hack an alternative.

Best wishes, Tony

Kristian Karden  on August 12th, 2007

Hi! Sorry to say, but in the newest version 0.1.4.7 the setting of home coordinates and default address seem not to work in any way. I’ve used ‘Add Address/Location’ and ‘Add Center Lat/Lon’ (in decimal deg), but nothing happens.Perhaps you would be kind enough to give some kind of advice. Thanks.

tones  on August 13th, 2007

Please follow the instructions on the Help Page – you need to use ‘Set as Map Home’ and ‘Set as Default Address’.

Kristian Karden  on August 13th, 2007

Many thanks for your answer. I seem to have been somewhat stupid, because I now found my home address on the map. However, the ‘Add Center Lat/Lon’ option doesn’t seem to work; if I type in the exact coordinates to the dialog window (in dec deg), nothing happens (no blue marker etc.). Perhaps you might still be able to give some advice. Thanks.

tones  on August 13th, 2007

Hi Kristian

The Add Centre Lat/Lng dialog is designed to use the coordinates of the red crosshair at the centre of the map. Move the map to where you want the blue marker to appear so that it is under the red crosshair.

To add a ‘wild card’ lat/lng, try using the add address/location dialog (hmm, confusing I know). Enter a comma seperated lat/lng pair and see if that works.

Please feel free to seek further clarification – might be best to pick this discussion up on a google group I have set up for the extension: http://groups.google.com/group/minimap-addon

Best wishes, Tones

Kristian Karden  on August 13th, 2007

Thank you, Tones! I think I got it working, for now, at least. Next time in google group, then!

neal whitehouse piper  on September 17th, 2007

I could not get this one going with UK data, i grabbed it via http://lifehacker.com then saw you were UK based so perhaps its just me…

Richard Sutton  on September 19th, 2007

Minimap is a thing of beauty for those of us constantly looking to orient ourselves. Its magic for me is in the easy drop of x,y pairs that gets the map to my coordinates of interest.

Is there any possibility of extending its comprehension to include xy embedded strings from other sources? I enjoy using a double map interface, with minimap on the left pane and MS Live Search on the right. If I could drag a permalink from virtual earth right into minimap to synchronize views it would be extremely useful.

Thanks,
Richard

tones  on September 19th, 2007

Hi Richard

In theory this should be easy to add into the next version – you can do it for Google and Yahoo maps permalinks so just need to add a few extra lines for local.live.com permalinks.

Will get onto it when I get a chance.

Tones

Sam  on September 25th, 2007

Hi Tones,

I love this extremely useful add-on, but I have 1 tiny gripe – it changes the colour of text highlighted in the browser’s location bar to blue. I don’t quite understand why it does this, but I have confirmed it by disabling the add-on to restore the text-highlighting to its usual gray colour. It makes the text a little bit hard to read.

Thanks,

Sam

tones  on September 25th, 2007

Hi Sam

Is there any chance of sending me a screenshot please.

mctones@gmail.com

Many thanks, T.

tones  on September 28th, 2007

now fixed in version 0.1.4.10

T.

JohnSmith  on December 30th, 2007

Any chance you get get this working for FF 3 beta 2?
Great addon by the way!

Gonzo  on February 20th, 2008

Hi,
I recently installed this nice plugin.
However, the german translation is first not complete – I think you are aware of this and I don’t really mind but personally I don’t like mixing various languages and would prefer a complete English one as long as the translation is not complete.

Second the current german translation suffers from severe errors which really offend me – this is surely not your fault but in spite of knowing the responsible person I’ll tell it here “standard” is the same word in GE, still ending with “d” instead of “t” – the latter version being still absolutely wrong although getting more and more common as ortographic education is getting worse

The addon itself seems higly useful and I appreciate your work!

tones  on February 20th, 2008

Hi Gonzo

The extension is translated at babelzilla.org – perhaps you could swing by and help the de-DE translator out

Best wishes, T.

Gonzo  on February 20th, 2008

Thx for the quick answer!
I left a comment for the german translator there…

cU

Steve Harman  on March 14th, 2008

Hi Tones,

Love the MiniMap extension. Superb! I use it for dragging the item location of eBay auction(s) I’m browsing.

Which lead me to thinking….

Would there be a way that MiniMap could somehow query eBay’s API (or something) extract the “item location” string of the current item being browsed and _automatically_ display the location on the MiniMap map? That would be uber-cool!

Thanks again – great job.

Steve
Cambridge, England.

tones  on March 14th, 2008

Hi Steve

I’ll add it to the list to look into further.

Tones

Dustin Thacker  on April 25th, 2008

Hi.
I LOVE this plugin. It provides me with a quick way to map a route of locations of available apartments in NYC very quickly. Just wondering if there is a way to print the map of multiple locations plotted directly from the sidebar. I thought it was there in an earlier version, but i can’t seem to find it now.

thanks
dustin

Kevin Peter  on April 29th, 2008

This plug-in is almost perfect for me, but there is one feature that I would really like. There is no sense of scale, and when I look at a map of a place I’m unfamiliar with, I have no idea if the distance I’m looking at is 500 meters or 50km. It would be nice to at least have the option of displaying a legend showing the relation between map distances and real life distances.

When using the Google Maps website, this feature appears on their maps in the lower-left, and I miss having this feature in this add-on. Since this add-on obviously uses Google Maps, I’m hoping this would be an easy feature to implement.

tones  on April 29th, 2008

Hi Kevin

With space in the sidebar cramped as it is, I simply do not think I can squeeze anyore in such as a scalebar.

Thank you for the feedback though. Tones

Michael  on June 25th, 2008

Hey,
very nice application you have created;)
everything is perfect for my personal use in firefox 3.
i choose the link and it will be shown on this map, but what i have to do when i will use this link/url as itself? i have deactivated javascript in firefox 3 and it works.. i have deactivated your plugin and shourly it works too.. but where is my mistake, how can i use this javascript links as themselfs and your plugin?

mikemos  on August 30th, 2008

I”m having similar problems. When I look up the address it goes to the correct city and state but when I click for directions it goes to NYC.

I think it might be the way google puts the address in parenthesis, like (Seattle, WA). Not sure, just a guess but I’ve had trouble pasting googles own addresses back into a search.

asasd  on February 4th, 2009

Hi there,

your minimap addon is great. But it interfers with Message reading on the social platform “StudiVZ” (studivz.net) which is JavaScript based. Could you please take a look on that issue and fix this with the next update?

Charles

SpatialThos  on February 22nd, 2009

Hello,

Installed 0.3.10 on Firefox 2.0.0.20 running on W2K SP2. Installation appeared OK but MiniMap sidebar would not open at all. Tried disabling Stylish “Sidebar without size restrictions” style and disabling Stylish but still wouldn’t work. Uninstalled. Will supply complete addon list (about:plugins) if you think it would be useful.

Thos

Ern  on March 24th, 2009

Is there a way to calculate the distance between two or more addresses? I guess you can get directions, but a feature to show a radius or a line would be nice.

Great addon

CarolR  on April 1st, 2009

I loved this minimap add-on to Firefox, but suddenly the map is just gone – the whole map area is just grey and doesn’t matter what I click on. Addresses are still listed, but no map visible and buttons are grayed out. Tried uninstalling and reinstalling, but no luck. Can you help please?

CarolR  on April 1st, 2009

Whoops – now find that I cannot close Minimap, even though there is no map

tones  on April 1st, 2009

see tweet on top right

CarolR  on April 1st, 2009

Thank you!

chephy  on December 12th, 2009

Hi,

Great extension… but somehow I managed to lose the minimap toolbar button. Tried uninstalling and then reinstalling the add-on, but the button is still missing. Any help?

tones  on December 12th, 2009

hi chephy

right click your firefox toolbar and choose customize – drag the minimap button from the customize dialog onto your toolbar

cheers, tony

jb  on December 29th, 2009

I came to this page looking for how to find minimap after installing twice; there is no minimap icon when I right-click the toolbar for the customize window (a few other icons, but not minimap). I also cannot see minimap when I go to View-Sidebar (I can find other features, but not minimap).

Is there another trick or location where I can get minimap to display? Please advise!