Pink Poogle Toy Forum

The flash maps are kinda crazy slow. I understand that they don't want to minimize graphic content for the benefit of people with slow connections, but having an html option doesn't hurt anyone, and the flash loads slow even on fast connections. Plus, I love the new map art- lovelovelove-I don't want it to be ruined for everyone for lack of flash.

I just noticed this on this week's editorial:

Next week on Editorial:
"Flash maps... FOR PETE'S SAKE, WHY?!!?" and "Dragona and socks... what is up with that?"

I think the cause is getting some attention

I submitted my comment/question to the editorial, like so many of you did. Hopefully it's a PPTer whose question gets answered.

I have no problem loading the Flash maps. However, I use Firefox. I like tabbed browsing. I like being able to CTRL+click a link and have it open in a new tab. I can't do that with links in Flash objects. That's the real reason I want the HTML maps back.

I was very cheered to see that! Hopefully, she will tell us that they are working on HTML maps, because the flash ones simply do not work for me.

I saw the mention of it for next weeks editorial and did a happy dance.

I know that I sent my question. apparently enough other's did too.

yay!!

i was really annoyed when i first found out it was a full flash thing, when i got my new laptop and was surfing.. hadn't transfered my bookmarks yet and being on dialup, took 2 hours to load or something, and was disappointed it wasn't anything special for taking so long..

and sometimes to make things run extra fast, i turn off images in my browser, and the lack of alt tags totally makes it useless.

*fingers crossed* that they are going to introduce html again, otherwise its going to be alot of bookmarking to be done..

I hope this problem gets solved soon. Even as a broadband user, I'm finding the 'longer' (hey! even a few miliseconds gets annoying) load times to be a pain. I want those miliseconds back

Good, then we'll have our answer soon.

The Lost Desert flash map isn't much of a problem for me, but the map for Neopian Central won't show up for me at all. It's very annoying. -.-

My firefox crashes sometimes if I click on the flash maps.

Answer from the editorial and a good many of you probably aren't going to be happy.

And now... FLASH MAPS!
We'll try to be as brief as possible.

First, we have a new system for updating our maps. That's quite obvious. So to explain the reasoning behind it, lets take the High Street shops map as an example.

Prior to the new system, maps were edited by hand. In the case of High Street, there are about 15 versions of that one map. Different icons appear depending on age, country, language, etc. At times, there are more than this, but we'll use 15 in the example. Anyway, one change to this map meant that 15 versions would have to be updated. 15 isn't so bad. However when you multiply it by 11 languages, you end up with 165 GIFs needing to be altered and exported by hand (for the HTML version). Then another 165 SWFs (for Flash versions) that also needed to be exported by hand. That's 330 images! BY HAND! It took days for someone to compile all that and put it all together. Then there needed to be an image map for each base GIF variation. As you can imagine, it was a very, very tedious job and it required quite a lot of production time from various people.

Our new system uses something called Flash Turbine. It allows PHP (the scripting language we use here at Neopets) to generate SWFs automatically! Basically, an alteration to a map now only requires someone to use the fancy admin we built to modify some variables on a map's icon. Turbine then generates all the necessary SWF files for us. Days of work is now down to about 30 minutes. That's it. Our map editor is a very, very happy camper now.

As most people have guessed, this system ONLY works with SWFs. We can't use it to generate GIF files, and there's obviously no main art file for the map now, so we can't export GIFs manually. The SWFs have taken over. If you were using the HTML option, you're not alone. Quite a few of us here used it, too! But because of how long it was taking to do maps manually, a new solution had to be found and it was decided (based on various statistics... how many people had Flash, how many people were connecting to the site at what speeds, how many people actually used the HTML option, etc.) we'd use this new system instead.

We know you were hoping to hear something like "We're working on HTML maps, YAY!" but we won't lie to ya. That's the scoop, and we all hope you can understand the necessity for the change. If anything comes along that might allow us to easily put GIF maps back in (and we've looked at a lot of solutions so far), we'll most certainly check into it, but until then, we're all SWF-bound.

I was so disappointed reading that I would rather have something like the FAQ pages that's text-based (an organized list of shops and features with possibly an image to associate with it) than having no low bandwidth option.

I wouldn't mind missing the pretty map if they provided an alternative for some of us who want no heavy flash maps.

NOOO!!!

I'm on dialup and loading one of those maps takes me forever, IF they opt to load at all.

Good explaination. I guess I can't complain as long as I have broadband. (Dreads visiting family who may not have broadband.) So does that mean that all maps are going to become Flash now?

I'm pretty dissapointed myself. Besides loading slow, I cant click a link and do (open in another tab) for firefox anymore.

OK, so it's good they are auto-generating the maps, now. But geesh, they are so slow. I hope soon they can come up with a solution that works quickly. I really like that text-oriented idea - it should be easy to implement. hmmph. spoiled rotten, I am.