Until Google Maps allows you to save locations, a bookmarklet (tested in Firefox and Safari) is in order.
To use:
- Drag the link below to your bookmarks
- Edit the URL to put in your own address
- Go to maps.google.com
- Click the bookmarklet
What it does:
- Activate the directions tab
- Fill the ‘start’ field with your address
- Set focus to the ‘end’ field
Hope someone else finds it useful.
I’m a fan of using keyword shortcuts in Camino and Firefox, so I made one for keyword ‘gd’ (Google Directions) with this URL which will fill in my destination and show me the map all at once. A much more simple one is just http://maps.google.com/maps?q=%s to fill in the query string yourself.
Thanks, Alex. 🙂
David, your URLs don’t seem to work for me.
Alex, you need to bookmark them in Firefox, and add a keyword to the bookmark. For instance, I have a bookmark with keyword “gd” with the url “http://maps.google.com/maps?q=from%20123%20Street%2099999%20to%20%s” (except my real address. Now, if I type “gd new york” in Camino’s location bar and hit enter, it magically goes to “this URL“, which gives me directions from my house to new york. The key is that Camino (and Firefox) will replace “%s” in the URL with whatever you have after the keyword (properly encoding spaces as %20 and other entities with their hex equivalents).
You might wanna check Mozilla Custom Keywords. There are a couple hacks to get keywords in Safari: Sogudi and SafariKeywords. I can’t vouch for either since I’m hooked to Camino/Firefox. You can also do similar searches in Quicksilver.
Hope that clears it up a bit. Anyways, nice site, keep up the good work.
One last note, the directions URL in the last one won’t retrieve anything because 123 Street 99999 is a fake address.
Here’s real directions from a real address: Directions from the White House to New York
I know about custom keywords, but I don’t use them (Saft also adds them to Safari). I generally search templates in LaunchBar.
David — that is awesome. Thank you! I wasn’t aware of keywording bookmarks. It’s going to change my life. 🙂
Here’s my contribution to the google maps bookmarklets:
Google Maps
If you just click the bookmark it will take you to Google Maps, but if you select an address on the page first it will show you the map for that address. If the address isn’t complete (ex. you only have the street address, the search filed will be populated with that and you can add the city to get the map).
Here’s a sample address to try it out on: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, DC
Here’s my contribution (let’s try this again) to the google maps bookmarklets:
Google Maps
I couldn’t get the link to post correctly, so you’ll want to edit it to look like: javascript:window.location.href=’http://maps.google.com/maps?q=’+window.getSelection();
If you just click the bookmark it will take you to Google Maps, but if you select an address on the page first it will show you the map for that address. If the address isn’t complete (ex. you only have the street address, the search filed will be populated with that and you can add the city to get the map).
Here’s a sample address to try it out on: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue Washington, DC
I’ve only tested this on Firefox, as that’s what I use.
Here’s an updated version that should work anywhere:
javascript:var url = ‘http://maps.google.com/maps?q=’;if(window.getSelection){url+=window.getSelection();}else if(document.getSelection){url+=document.getSelection();}else if(document.selection){url+=document.selection.createRange().text;}window.location.href=url;
Google Maps Bookmarklet
Following up on
The following bookmarklet will follow a plotted route from start to finish, moving the map as appropriate:
javascript: (function () {mv = function(i) { c = _m.map.directions.polyline.getPoint(i);_m.map.recenterOrPanToLatLng(c); if (i < _m.map.directions.polyline.numPoints - 1) {window.setTimeout("mv("+(i+1) + ")",500)}}; mv(0)})();It works best when you’ve zoomed in pretty closely. It has no error checking so ensure you have actually got directions currently listed. It takes no notice of the zoom level nor how many points there are in the route, so it could take a long time if the route is long. Obviously there are improvements that can be made along those lines.
I’ve tested this under FireFox 1.0 on Mac OS X, I’d be interested to know if it works successfully elsewhere.
More details can be found in the comments at: http://jgwebber.blog[...]-google.html
(Apologies for the multiple attempts the “less than” character was not being converted to an entity by the comment post code.
links for 2005-02-11
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This is a picture of the top of my house taken by a satellite and gathered by me simply by typing my address into Google Maps. Well, almost the top of my house. I don’t actually live in a rabbit-hole in the park….
Google Maps
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I had to made a small change to get this to work at Linux (Kanotix, a Debian SID), running Firefox 1.0.4:
Original
javascript:window.location.href=’http://maps.google.com/maps?q=’+window.getSelection();
changed:
javascript:window.location.href=”http://maps.google.com/maps?q=”+window.getSelection();
All i did is replace the ’ by ”
JanMartin
OK,
this will open any selected address in a new window (or tab if you set Firefox to do so) and show a googel map:
javascript:window.open(href=’http://maps.google.com/maps?q=’+window.getSelection())();
JanMartin