Los Angeles — Google Maps on Wednesday released a greater redesign and the new street view also received some user interface changes that are pretty fantastic and much more prominent. The latest release now lets users to drag a little human figure named “Pegman” over any streets that light up blue and get a preview of Street View for that location.
Now, whenever a user is viewing a map and wish to experience the reality in cities where Street View imagery is available, you will see a male icon illuminated in orange on the right side controls. This, Google refers it to as “Pegman.”
To activate the Google Maps feature, clicking and dragging the “Pegman” character off the top of the zoom slider and dropping the icon will transfer you to Street View, which will take up the entire maps portion of the screen.
The controls on the right-hand side now look cleaner and there is an easier way to enter Street View, Google Maps’ optional view that allows you to explore a location through real photos taken at street level. It is a lot faster than enabling Street View through a drop-down then clicking where you want to go.
When the Pegman is dropped at the desired location, the whole map view changes into a Street View viewer and there is a button to further enlarge that view to take up the whole horizontal length of your browser.
When the Pegman is used to navigate Street View, you can also split your screen between maps and Street View by selecting the “expand” arrows on the mini map in the lower right corner of Street View, allowing you to navigate all from the same screen. And to return back to the regular map view you simply click on the Pegman icon again.
These changes are widely welcomed as it really helps take advantage of the eye candy that is Street View in Google Maps. While these are great updates on the whole, Map search is a heated competition between Google, Microsoft, MapQuest and a handful of other consumer market competitors. That competition goes on in both features like this and in image quality.
For more information — and a miniature Pegman gallery that showcases various holiday-themed Easter eggs–check Google’s Lat-Long blog post from programmer Stephane Lafon and user experience designer Andy Szybalski.