Thank you so much Richard for this excellent app - I'm enjoying the iPhone app as an addition to what was already my go-to routing site. I have a couple of app questions. Sorry if this gets a bit long!
- Does the iPhone app contextualise the icons at the bottom of the screen? Occasionally on the iPhone app I see a set of icons at the bottom of the screen relating to eg. time to destination, which I really like. But most of the time while I'm riding the bottom of the screen seems to be focused on only the next turn, even if that's quite far away. I haven't managed to get a good look at which icons are visible when, and I haven't found anything written down about what to expect at different stages, or how to change between them. Apologies if I've missed it but could you provide some explanation please?
- Have you thought at all about the option to customise the icons at the bottom of the screen? For example I'm very unlikely to ever need to look up accommodation in the app, and very rarely find a POI. Could these two valuable slots be used for something else?
And a couple of questions from my most recent ride, please tell me if you want this feedback through other routes. I realise these issues might be particular to city cycling, for example where there may be lots of equivalent routes:
- When I went off-route, and chose the "Reroute" button, the app seemed to lose my routing completely rather than just recalculate
- Is there any way to set defaults for what happens when you go off route? With gloves on I can't make a choice on the screen, so have to stop if I want the app to help me out. In most cases I would like it to reroute unless that increases the distance significantly.
- There is a road local to me which would be a great shortcut and the app often suggests it, but unfortunately, (a) it's a very steep narrow path and (2) it has no-cycling signs. It's Rock Hill, London SE26. I guess it's wrongly labelled in OSM?
- On my latest ride the app made a few odd suggestions on its choices for zig-zagging through grids of London residential streets - seeming to suggest longer routes when the shorter ones were essentially identical (eg. for traffic/surface etc). Is feedback on these of interest to you? I grabbed a screenshot of one in case that's helpful to you. Unfortunately it wasn't a saved route and the website isn't making the same suggestion if I ask again now.
- If I do choose a slightly different route for a short section, the app seems to want to take me back to the start of the deviation, even if I'm about to rejoin the original route. Is there a way to help it look ahead and see that our routes will converge?
Comments
Really glad you like the app!
Essentially the turn directions are displayed either side of a turn, for roughly 100m before and 100m after; the ‘bike computer’ (time to destination, etc.) is displayed at all other times. But I might take a look at reducing the distance after each turn in urban areas – it makes sense in more rural places, but in an urban area it’s not unusual to have a turn every 200m.
I’ve given some thought to how (and when) the buttons appear at the bottom of the display – in particular, when you’re actually underway and moving, there’s probably no need for the buttons at all. Unfortunately, layouts are the most complex, time-consuming and error-prone part of iOS development – way more than they have any right to be! – and even a change like that would be the work of several days. So it’s on the radar but it’s not something I can promise any time soon I’m afraid.
For the routing oddities (and in particular Rock Hill) – just to check, are you sure you haven’t accidentally left the app in gravel routing mode? That’s the only way I can get it to go via Rock Hill – in standard mode it just goes via the roundabouts by Crystal Palace. But screenshots (or even better, links to saved routes!) are really helpful in diagnosing this sort of thing.
Generally the reroute button will plan a new route from your current location to your destination – if you’ve added via points then it will keep any that look like they’re further on in the route, but obviously you wouldn’t want it to keep ones that you’ve probably cycled past already! It tries to use your current compass direction as a hint when rerouting, but if it’s doing something that seems counter-intuitive, do let me know where and what, and I can try and recreate the problem.