Zoom tooltip hack

Average users don't care about zoom level numbers, but some people do. Developers do.

I created a 'semihidden' zoom level display for my pages. Google provides hints like "zoom in" and "zoom out" if you hover the zoom control element (slider). I thought that average map users already know those things.

Try hovering zoom slider of the first quadtree example page. Yes, hovering the zoom slider will display also meters/px resolution. That is an extra bonus for those who are interested in the World.

Have a look in the source code. It is commented there as "zoom tooltip hack". Feel free to copy the hack, if you like it. You can molest the code any way you like.  Shall this post be the license.

Distance Matrix

Distance Matrix service was introduced in the latest update of v3 API. It returns maximum 100 driving distances and durations by a single request. Reference.

All of you who have a store locator, can now add true driving distances and estimated driving times in search results. Also you can filter out results that exceed a distance limit. If user searches by 100 km radius, you may want to return only results that have a true driving distance less than 100 km.

It is like driving directions without directions. Some people have tried to implement something similar by making multiple driving distance requests. Many of them faced problems with the asynchronous responses not coming back in the same order that requests were made. The new service is very simple to use.

It has travelMode option too. So it can be used for walking distances in city maps.

This is a useful service.