Redmond, Washington — In an attempt to keep pace with its rivals, Bing continues to upgrade its numerous product offerings, and over the weekend announced a series of enhancements to the Bing Maps interface, which coincides with the “AJAX V7 Control,” eliminating the need for Silverlight to view enhanced Bird’s Eye map views, touting both their faster load times and quicker performance.
According to the Redmond Company, the layout was changed in order to make simpler navigation for end users. Moreover, the Bing blog post on the topic stated that the performance of the new version is made possible because it is “less than 1/3 the size of our v6.3 control. This smaller size helps V7 load faster than our previous control.”
“One thing we re-moulded is the left-side rail for Bing.com/Maps, giving you a through on-ramp to what you need to do: get driving, walking, or transit directions; analysis live traffic and traffic cameras; get outlook on local restaurants and businesses; and explore Map Apps,” revealed Brian Hendricks, Bing Maps Product Manager.
Map Apps is a growing collection of tools that amplifies the capabilities of Bing Maps; some — like the Taxi Fare Calculator and Parking Finder — are extremely functional and useful to all, while others appeal to a more limited audience.
The revamped left-side rail now makes it remarkably straightforward for users to get directions, but also access traffic information, locate businesses and even explore the map applications accessible.
There has been roaring controversy in recent weeks over whether Microsoft is going to drop its own Silverlight framework in favor of HTML5 and perhaps better cross-platform capabilities. Although Silverlight remains a big component of Bing Maps, powering Map Apps, including StreetSide, which has now been promoted to a Map App, but is more in keeping with the “basic maps in AJAX, map apps in Silverlight” theme.
Also, performance has been strikingly improved, with V7 “render[ing] multiple points on a map up to 3 times faster than v6.3.”
Apparently, numerous changes have been made, some more sophisticated than others. The top toolbar has been updated once again, this time completely renaming one of the core features of Bing Maps, Bird’s Eye.
However, we are still awaiting to see some action over the promised enhancements from Bing Maps and Streetside, including embedded video and indoor panoramas, and so we still expect big things to come from StreetSide.
StreetSide, which relies on Silverlight but much more importantly featured in the previous version of the Bing Maps home screen, has been demoted to only one of (currently) 55 Bing Map Apps. It does not appear to get any kind of special billing at all, although it is still very cool Silverlight powered technology, featuring street side views, and nearby images pulled from Flickr:
Hendricks noted that additional effort was put into integration of the AJAX and Silverlight. Basically, the software behemoth has transformed StreetSide into a Map App. Still, mutually Map Apps and StreetSide persist to have need of Silverlight and that to be installed on the user’s computer in order to work.
“To access Map Apps, click either the ‘explore map apps’ link or Map Apps button in the lower-left of the screen. Utilize the search box or modify the variety to find the map app you are searching for,” Hendricks explained.
As more business is done on mobile, you need to have a control that is built for mobile browsing. V7 delivers in these scenarios with a small control size, support for HTML5 and touch support for mobile devices. Furthermore, the Silverlight powered Bing Map Apps are now reachable by anyone using Bing Maps, that is, you do not have to run the beta Silverlight version of Bing Maps to have Map Apps links available.
Anyways, Bing Maps became much better today.