Hi Sleeper,

Cheers for this - great to get detailed thoughtful feedback and even better when people take the trouble to come and post it here, where we can give it thorough attention.

Good to hear that the live elements of the HTML5 app are working well on your HTC Desire. If you want to zoom out, you could always

1) Expand the map using the Green Arrow.
2) click the 'Crosshairs' top right - and see your position in relation to the check in. Pinching should also work - will look into why it isn't.

So far as featureset /roadmap is concerned, we're currently focussing all our efforts on rolling out functionality to the HTML5 app. The first things we'll be launching, this week hopefully, is additional views. One (local) addresses your 2nd suggestion.

'Local' will allow you to view checkins nearest to you
'Food' will allow you to sort and search by produce type.

After these are live, we move on to Photo support. We hope to get this working as soon as possible - again, hopefully by the end of the week.

With regards to your other 2 suggestions, both are great. Re Password - we're halfway through the code for this and hoped to have it finished but encountered some difficulties with development. We're working on it.

We can look at improving our Google Maps integration, at the moment we're using it extensively but have chosen to keep all activity in the app. Would love your feedback on the detailed view map after you've played about with the 'Expand Map' and 'show directions from current position' Crosshair options. We designed our maps to be easy to follow, when expanded, for any route.

Keep the feedback coming - we've work to do, but the goal for us is most definitely that our HTML5 app will offer the exact same functionality as our native iPhone app.

Best,
Mark

Thanks Mark

I saw the map manipulation stuff and it works well. Just a little bit tricky to scroll the page down when expanded as you have about 2mm on the edge of the map to select the page and not the map. Not a biggy

Pinching only does the whole web page for me and not just the map area. If I double tap the map it zooms in but just cant zoom out. Maybe there is another tapping regime on android but I cant discover it.

I understand you want to keep the activity inapp but just would be nice if I could get directions easily

You cant select the destination address as it pops up so cant copy and paste it. Probably not your problem just how google displays the bubble. When you try and select it is selects one of the map image tiles below.

Hope Im not adding to the dreaded scope creep. All extra things will clutter the nice clean interface

Ah ok. I think I misunderstood you a little, sorry.

Zoom functionality is something I'm sure we can improve and will start working on it.

Re road by road based Directions I like your thinking - we do have work to do in this area, our goal being to allow accurate navigation and elegant contact methods, with producers. I like the idea of plugging more extensively into the Google maps api - and incorporating results into the app. It's on the whiteboard and as we progress other core functionality we'll continue to improve this element.
There is a little bit of 'scope creep' to this - but really it's the kind of functionality we envisage and as soon as we have the resources, we'll progress it.

Cheers again for your feedback - very valuable to us!

Hey Sleeper,
the issue with pinch zooming is to do with the way HTC's modified browser ignores the meta-tags that prevent mobile browsers from zooming out - more info on this here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3460525/disable-pinch-zoom-in-android-2-1-browser-on-htc-devices.

It could be possibility of adding a button to google maps, and letting android pick it up and pass over to the maps app (if installed) without too much difficulty.

Nice one thanks for the info

Just to follow up, I've added a button to the maps area on the mobile UI that links to either a standard overview or with directions. Should be coming down the pipeline soon :)