Sorry, forgot to mention. The planner is a mess on mobile I totally forgot to make it mobile friendly as I didn't think anyone would want to plan their trip on a phone.
Interesting assumption. My mind goes to to a) Most people are mobile first and b) In this category of app, i imagine people want the route with them on their phone as they bike (as they're probably unfamiliar with the route, hence the need to plan it)
Cool idea, i'd love to try it but honestly i'd love it on my phone for the aforementioned reasons!
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Edit: Some follow up remarks (From Chrome on a Mac)
1. I found it a bit confusing when creating a route. I assumed it would let me do address completion. The UI seems to just be naming my route instead, i think if you're going to borrow visually from Google maps you should follow their patterns.
2. I was able to add my first point (my home), but adding a second point never worked.
3. The click mechanic is a bit odd. I expect clicking elsewhere when the menu is open (add point/close) that the menu would go away - rather than re-appear in my new click location.
4. The map centred me over Europe, i'm in Canada however. Some GeoIP lookup here could give a better experience.
5. Re:point 2, this seems to work when i selected random locations in Europe. I assume this is a data issue? So the real issue here (apart from the routing not working) is there's no feedback on the UI when the routing fails.
6. Refreshing my screen loses my route. Any chance you could save it to local storage or something? Would be amazing if i could create this route on my desktop and then send a link to my phone (once mobile is supported?)
I think the purpose is to export the route to GPX, so that you can use it on your phone when you're cycling.
Yeah, that's fair. I just don't have a habit of doing that so for me the GPX thing while good is a change in behaviour that limits me from adopting this app / exploring new trails. Also on further thought, i could see myself wanting to change the route mid-journey and that would be another issue with only having the GPX file.
Thanks for the feedback! I actually want to have it on mobile as well but will most likely choose React Native instead of trying to make the web app work on mobile (or maybe only with some very simple functionality). At first, my approach was to have a planner on desktop and route viewer/navigator on mobile, but you're right - there needs to be an option to update/modify your route while traveling.
Regarding state: it's only a matter of changing the blacklist array in redux persist config. Right now I have all global state blacklisted because I noticed a small bug with rendering the map layers when the state is persisted and I didn't have time to fix it but in the next version it will be persisted in localstorage.
>a) Most people are mobile first
I couldn't imagine trying to build a complex route on a tiny screen with a crappy phone UI. I am starting to feel like an old man yelling at clouds here. Why in the hell wouldn't you prefer to use a nice monitor with a mouse for a complex task like this?
> I couldn't imagine trying to build a complex route on a tiny screen with a crappy phone UI.
I nearly always plan routes on my phone. After all, it's the device I use for navigation attached to the stem of my bike.
> Why in the hell wouldn't you prefer to use a nice monitor with a mouse for a complex task like this?
The task isn't very complex with a decent UI. See for example the open-source app OSMAnd (Android & iPhone). Also, I am rarely at my desk, but I always have my phone on me. There can also be the issue of "Neat, I made a route on a big screen; now, how do I get it on my phone for real-time navigation?" depending on the app you are using.
Obviously not a representative sample, but I'd say ~25% of the people I know have a monitor and mouse, and the majority of that group only use it for work.
Thia isn't to say you're wrong. I much prefer my monitor and mouse for anything of reasonable complexity. But I increasingly find myself in the minority in that regard among people I know. Hell, I even find myself in the minority for using a laptop for tasks sometimes.
I mean, i made the remark and I feel the same as you. I think its just the reality of the world we live in. A lot of people are mobile first, watching a neighbours kid try use a mouse the other day really drilled it home for me. Put her on a phone? No issues. But on the laptop the kid was as lost as I was when my dad showed me a slide rule (i'm 38).
Perhaps the number of mobile users would be lower than desktop, but I’ve had to reroute a planned trip from my phone a few times now due to unforeseen construction and road obstructions.
I share your perspective. I use Komoot extensively and I use it only on the phone for recording the ride, have it route me through the trip I planned on the web interface, and also to check where some paths I find during the ride lead to. If I then decide to use that unknown path, I either add a new waypoint or just ignore it until I'm on the planned track again (just seeing the trails is then good enough).
There are simply some things where a phone screen is just too small to use efficiently, and the fingers sometimes aren't just a good, precise enough input device.
Though I am a bit irritated by the brightness of the route on your site, it lacks contrast with respect to the surrounding map.
BTW, how is that routing done? Like which is the used routing engine and is it done server-side or in the browser?
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It does seem to have a bug, where, when deleting a waypoint, the mouse still is in "create waypoint mode", and any mouse-down on the map, including for panning, results in adding a waypoint.
When I'm on multi-day trips, planning on my phone is the only option. I usually plan only a couple days ahead and refresh the route based on that day's detours and activities.
I'm so desktop first, it's not even funny. But this is one of the few things I do on mobile. When I have the chance to go for a long ride I do the routing every few hours or so. This because I'm using something called Turfgame.com to explore new areas and take zones for a competition. I need to plan the route between the zones and maybe change route in case someone blocks my path. This will be done on the phone while having a break somewhere. I'm using Ride With GPS for the recording of the path and Naviki for the routing because that has all the turf zones as POI's so very easy to reroute.
+1 for mobile. I would use it primarily as a means to plan urban routes and cycle touring (I wouldn't be touring with my laptop :P)
Fwiw, mapping is the thing I genuinely value smart phones for (vs dumb phones). I've been recently looking at uploading the gpx traces to my new Garmin watch, but creating the traces is still not perfect. OSMAnd does a reasonable job, but it's a bit circuitous to get the trace uploaded.