We went through the main js file today and implemented two simple techniques to (hopefully) improve performance.  We traded our javascript concatenation for the Atlas Sys.StringBuilder, and we 'cached' some of our objects.  Here's an example that incorporates both techniques:

We changed something like this:

for (var i=0; i < someArray.length; i++)
{
   var s = someArray[i].Name + someArray[i].Rating;
}

to:

for (var i=0; i < someArray.length; i++)
{
   var s = new Sys.StringBuilder();
   var movie = someArray[i];
   s.append(movie.Name);
   s.append(movie.Rating);
}

We've added some new pushpin styles that will hopefully match the site a little better.  Favorite theaters show up as stars on the map now.  Also, we've added a Help section to the navigation that provide a Quick Tutorial and a form to submit a missing theater.

We've updated the info panels to have a snazzier look and better layout.  Check it out!

Also, look for current LA/Austin data within a week!

Happy Memorial Day!

New loading image and logo device have been added.  All assets are now original.

We've cleaned up the favorite theater mapping a little bit.  If you haven't selected any favorites, you no longer have the option to map them or clear them.  Once you add a favorite, those options will immediately appear.  If you decide to map your favorites, only your favorites will be mapped, even if their are other theaters in the resulting map view.  If you decide you want to map non-favorites in that same area, you are now given a link at the top of the theater list to do just that.

• Now if you search for a location that doesn't list times, but does list theaters, we will map those theaters.
• If you search for a location that has no theaters, we will still map the location, so that you can zoom in/out and pan around from there.
• Notice that we're saying "location" instead of "zip code"?  That's because you can type in more than just a zip code.  Here's some other things you might type there:
• Los Angeles, CA
• Los Angeles
• Los Angeles, 90094
• Los Angeles, CA 90094
• 7011 Fountain Ave, Hollywood, CA

You get the idea.

Hopefully, this Monday, we'll be filling out the necessary paperwork to start providing real movie time data for the Los Angeles, CA and Austin, TX markets.  We'll probably run the site for just these two markets for a month or two to work out some bugs as well as to gauge public response.  If people use it as much as we think they will, then more markets will be soon to follow!

• There's a new welcome screen for those who haven't visited before (or if you're using a computer that has no cookies for this site).
• The font, font colors, and sizes have changed for many of the elements.
• Clicking on a theater name in the Movie Detail box will pan the map to that theater.
• If there are too many movie times to fit in the Movie Detail box, the times will scroll, but the movie info stays put.

By the way, the RSS feeds for this blog are working now.

Some users were complaining (and rightly so) that it was sometimes hard to move the mouse from a movie title in the Movies panel down to the Movie Detail panel without accidentally mousing over another movie and highlighting its details instead.  So, now, when you click on a movie, a small icon appear will next to it indicating that this movie is 'locked' into the detail panel.  Mousing over a new movie title will still set the detail while you are over the new movie title, but as soon as you mouse out, the movie detail will revert to whatever the 'locked' movie detail is.  Clicking on a new movie title will make it the new 'locked' movie.

Just when we were getting ready to do a wider launch of http://www.showtimemaps.com/, and they go and change the Virtual Earth control.  Not only that, but they removed the javascript files we were referencing!  Fortunately, we have a local copy, so our site works again.  Hopefully, they'll release some info quickly about how to quickly get to the new version.  Also, it's kind of strange that they are already on v3, since v2 was never really "official".

UPDATE: We perused the documentation and started working on upgrading to v3.  Unfortunately, they seem to have gone away from the VE_Panel and replaced it with something that appears to be intended to contain much more specific data.  It may turn out that we won't need them to support anything panel-like and will just rely on our own layering for more flexible data display.  An upgrade to v3 may just not include updating panels.

We've added some cursor changes and tool tips for the theater list areas.  When you click on a theater name in the list, it will pan to that theater on the map (without updating the list).  There are still some decisions to be made about when an update is triggered.

And just like that it's fixed.  We fixed this by explicity setting the opacity on the theater listing div back up to 100%.

The interface for adding/removing theaters has gotten a little better.  You'll now see some icons next to theater names indicating whether it's a favorite or not and what you can do when you mouseover it.  Along with this came the ability to remove a single favorite, instead of having to clear them all out.  There is a transparent PNG issue in IE because of the double transparency of the PNG and the panel.  It looks good in Firefox, and we'll get it working in IE soon.

The site is back up with a brand new data structure behind it.  Hopefully, it will be faster and not so hard on the memory on the server.  There's still room for improvement here, but we should be set to launch a preliminary test with real data very soon!

We're changing the structure of the data on the back-end to alleviate some of the processing load when compiling the data to send to the client.  Shouldn't take long.

This blog is to help provide a dialog, where we can post updates that we're working on or have completed, while also garnering feedback via the comments about how we can improve the interface.

For now, just check out http://www.showtimemaps.com/ and post any comments or suggestions as comments to this post.