RouteSlip.com Updates

I’m really excited to announce the latest update. Here’s what you’ll see:

New Design

First off, you can’t miss the new design. It took a while because I’m borderline design-challenged. A friend helped, and also created a GREAT logo for me. Drop him a line if you need some great design work.

There were two main goals behind the new design:

1. It had to offer users a much larger map, and still support some people (yes, they’re still out there) running on 800×600. I opted to go a more pure-CSS approach this time - and while not NEW, it was a first-time for me. You’ll also notice a “collapsing” menu that gives you more information about the route and doesn’t take real estate away from the map.
2. It also had to support the inclusion of unobtrusive ads. My philosophy with the start from the beginning was that if ads weren’t unobtrusive, I didn’t want them. The old design didn’t accomodate this, so they were omitted.

New Feature: Favorites

You can finally start creating a list of your favorite routes by other users. In the next couple days, you’ll see this list introduced to the training log as well. To add a route to your Favorites when you view the route. You’ll find the option in the “Map Options” panel on the route page.

New Feature: Pacelines™

Pacelines are a kind of “buddy list” on RouteSlip.com. Add your friends to your Paceline, and you’ll be able to easily share routes between members of the Paceline. Make sure your friends add you as well! To add a user to your Paceline by either visit the user’s personal page on RouteSlip.com or view one of their routes. You’ll find the option in the “Map Options” panel on the route page.

Bug Fixes

1. Metric distances sometimes showing up as “Imperial” (a new term for me) measurements with a “km.” or “m.” designation.
2. Out-and-Back rides only display the “Out” climbing data on the My Routes page.
3. … and a couple other minor things…

Coming Soon…

I’ve heard you, and the following items are at or near the top of my list:

• Advanced Editing Features. This will include the ability to move points, insert points mid-way in the route, and remove multiple points at once.
• Open Training Journal. You’ll be able to enter your own distances and elevation data instead of having to choose a route.
• Route Comments. Registered users of the site will be able to leave comments about routes.
• Bike Team/Group Features. This will include email distribution lists, shared route “pools”, ride calendars, and team news.

Lastly…

I’m developing what I think is a pretty unique and innovative advertising program for RouteSlip.com. (AdWords ain’t it) When I have the details ready I’ll be making another announcement. Until then, if you or friends or colleagues would be interested in advertising on the site, please let me know!

No other feature has been more frequently requested than editing routes. Well, it’s finally here! Additionally, I’ve done my best to improve the performance issues that were introduced with the last round of updates. I don’t think it’s totally eliminated yet, but I have plans on how to (hopefully) do just that.

You may have noticed a recent post where I mentioned some interesting statistics about the site. Given the size of the audience now, the limited testing that I’m able to do on my computer just isn’t cutting it. There are just too many variables in play that I simply do not have the time or the capability to reproduce. So I’ve recently started “recruiting” volunteers who have offered to help test fixes and new features for the site. If you’re interested in volunteering, you can fill out this form and I’ll get in touch with you.

Lastly, I wanted to get the word out that I have a new blog on the site. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while now, and I finally got around to it. I’ll be publishing all updates through the blog, but will also email updates for as long as I can (last time, my email account was suspended for 48 hours after getting a lot of returned mail).

Fixes

1. Creating and Loading Routes — Many people reported problems either creating routes or viewing routes. I reported last time that I had fixed “the performance problem,” however, the latest enhancement release of RouteSlip.com fixed one issue with creating large routes, but brought to light another issue with loading routes or browser crashes. See this post for more info. This should now be fixed. As I mentioned above, I have additional enhancement plans that should improve this further.

Recent Enhancements

1. Editing Routes — You can now edit routes that you’ve created. You’ll see an “Edit” button on the route display screen. You can use all the same features that you use to create the route. I’ll add some additional features to make editing (and creating) routes even easier — but I wanted to get this out there ASAP.
2. Copying Routes — You can create copies of your routes. On your “My Routes” page, move your mouse over the name of the route and click the copy icon.
• Note: If you’re nervous about editing your existing route, make a copy first and edit that one!
3. Route Reports — The route reports now show elevation and climbing.
4. Link to Your My Routes Page — Want to share the routes you’ve created with friends? On your “My Routes” page, you’ll see a link to your “public” profile page where people can find your routes.

A Few Upcoming Enhancements

1. Training Journal — You’ll be able to track the rides that you do in your profile. The first release of this will be pretty basic, but will include lots of bells and whistles in the near future.
2. Route Search — A route search feature is on it’s way!
3. Ride difficulty index — As part of the route search, you’ll notice that each route has a Difficulty Index. This will be an objective scoring of a route relative to the rest of the routes on RouteSlip.com
4. Printing — Ability to print your route, routeslip, and elevation profile together.
5. Site Facelift — I’m in the process of redesigning the site. It’ll work much better and give you a larger map view, among other great features.

Please keep the feedback coming!!

It’s been a long time since the first (and only) update, but this will hopefully be the first update of many this summer. I have a lot of plans for RouteSlip.com this summer and I think you’ll be happy with the results!

I’ve received a ton of feedback about the site so far and it’s been wonderful hearing about what you like (and what you didn’t) about the site. There have been a few things that I think just about everyone emailed me about and many suggestions that I had never considered. I have a long list of enhancements planned for rollout in the next few months and I look forward to hearing your feedback.

Recent Enhancements

1. Performance Enhancement — Many people reported problems when creating large routes. The size limitation (in terms of the number of points along the route) depended on each person’s computer, but I typically experienced it around 50+ miles. I’ve redesigned almost all of the front-end code and made it much more efficient. Let me know if you notice any limitations when you get into the REALLY big routes.
2. Accumulated Distance and Accumulated Elevation — This was probably the 2nd-most-requested feature. Now, when you create or view routes, you’ll see the elevation gain along your route and the accumulated distance at each point along the route. Mouse-over the points along the route for details.
3. Distance Display on Routeslips — A major oversight on my part. Now, on the printed routeslip you have the distance along the route for each turn.
4. Several new “turn” options were added, including ‘End at’, ‘Regroup’, ‘Cross’, ‘Pass’ and others.
5. Enhanced User Profile — You can now tell the RouteSlip.com community much more about yourself as well as specify U.S./Metric preferences for your sessions. Additional community features will be added soon, and for now you can get a jump-start on your bio by updating your profile from your ‘My Routes’ page.
6. Auto-Login — Now you can choose to have RouteSlip.com remember you each time you return to the site.
7. Route ‘Start’ point — You’ll see a larger icon on each map at your starting point.

A Few Upcoming Enhancements

1. Editing Routes, Save Routes in Progress — I would have liked to include these features in this release, but the performance enhancements was more than enough work for the time being. This should be out sometime in the next 4-5 weeks.
2. Training Journal — You’ll be able to track the rides that you do in your profile. The first release of this will be pretty basic, but will include lots of bells and whistles in the near future.
3. Route Search — A route search feature is on it’s way!
4. Ride difficulty index — As part of the route search, you’ll notice that each route has a Difficulty Index. This will be an objective scoring of a route relative to the rest of the routes on RouteSlip.com
5. Ability to print your route, routeslip, and elevation profile together.
6. TONS more…

Bug Fixes

1. Elevation profiles did not show the correct distance.
2. Some cities were missing from the ‘Find Routes’ lists.
3. Logged out after saving a route.

Please keep the feedback coming!!

It’s been more than a week since I began promoting the site, and I was blown away by the response I received! I was truly flattered to hear the many people’s positive feedback on the site. Even better, many people took advantage of the “Feature Request” option on the site and let me know what they think the site still needs. RouteSlip.com is still in “beta” — meaning that many more features are on the way, and, unfortunately, is not 100% bug free (more on that later).

I’ll send out these emails when I think there’s a change to the site that you want to know about (based on the emails I receive). I’ll try to keep these emails to a minimum so as not to abuse the trust you’ve granted by opting to stay informed on the progress of the site. Occasionally, I may also send a request for your feedback on particular planned functions for the site.

So without further ado, I wanted to give you a glimpse into what I’ve been hearing from the RouteSlip.com community. (this will probably be a shorter list in the future)

Recent Enhancements

1. Default center on your location — Several people requested that I center the maps on their location. I had this on my to-do list already, but bumped it up after the requests came in. Incidentally, I center the map based on the city and state that you entered when registering. If you want to change this, you can edit your profile from your “My Routes” page.
2. Update User Profiles — As mentioned, on your “My Routes” page, you can now update the profile you created when registering. Your user profile today has pretty basic information. Later, you may have the opportunity to include more information about your riding preferences, etc, to make your experience at RouteSlip.com even better. All information in your profile is and will be private (except username), and any additional information I add in the future will be strictly optional.
3. Find Routes: Sort by State — When it was just me and a handful of pre-beta testers, the original Find Routes page was fine. As soon as word got out, however, I (and others) realized that it was hardly usable. Now, routes are categorized by state first, then city. You may notice that the route counts on the state and city pages don’t add up. That’s because I show the number of routes that go through a particular city — and a given route likely goes through multiple cities.
4. Deleting Routes — A heavily requested feature (just behind editing routes) was deleting routes. Now you can. On your “My Routes” page, move your mouse over the name of the route and click the trash can icon to delete the route.
5. New Technical Discussion forum. Click the “Technical Discussion” link at the bottom of the page to ask technical questions about the site.

Pending Feature Requests (in rough order of the number of requests)

1. Editing Routes, Save Routes in Progress — Alright, already! I received more emails about this one missing feature than anything else. Initially I was hesitant because it’s not a trivial enhancement, but it seems to be what everyone wants to see. Seems reasonable
2. Include cumulative distances on routeslips and the route map.
3. Include accumulated climb information for the route.
4. Start/End points on the route.
5. Ability to print your route, routeslip, and elevation profile together.
6. Include metric measurements (kilometers, meters).
7. Add “End at” and “Regroup” options to the point information window.
8. Route Search by route characteristics.
9. Add points of interest to the route (water stops, regroup points, bathrooms, etc)
10. “Back from [Point X]” — Instead of the existing “out and back” functionality, include a feature to return to the start of the ride from a given point on the route.
11. Visual representation of routes on a map.
12. List routes by area (e.g. San Francisco Bay Area) instead of (or in addition to) by city.
13. Enlarge the map size.
14. Driving directions to the ride start.

Bug Fixes

1. Elevation service back online (not really my fix, but it impacted the site)
2. Incorrect route counts on the state and city pages. (fixed a bug, but please see the note above about the route counts)
3. “Other cities” not saved correctly (fixed on routes already created as well)
4. Routeslip reversed printing on the printer-friendly version of the routeslip

Open Bugs (bad news… sorry)

1. Occasional route saving problems with some browsers (largely fixed, but still occasional reports)
2. Performance problems when creating large routes (50+ miles)
3. “save route” form validation error (occasional problem with some users)
4. “Out and Back” return directions are incorrect.

Hi. My name is Ryan. I live in Irvine and am a relatively newly established biking enthusiast. I wanted to let you and your club know about a new site that I think you and your users would really like.

I launched RouteSlip.com (www.routeslip.com) at the end of 2005 because I wanted a way to keep track of the rides that I do on weekends, etc. After a trial launch period, I’m ready to announce RouteSlip.com’s availability to the world!

Here’s a list of some of the highlights that you’ll find at RouteSlip.com:

1. Interactive road maps of your area (maps provided by Google Maps!)
2. Easily create your own custom routes on the map, including turn-by-turn directions.
3. Print routeslips for your rides based on your route.
4. View elevation information for your route, including an elevation profile.
5. Save your routes to your personal RouteSlip.com page.
6. View routes created by other users or find routes by city.
7. Rate your routes as well as those created by other users. Highest rated routes are featured on the homepage.

Registration on the site is free, and no registration is required to view routes created by other users.

This site has been a labor of love for the last 6 months and I’m really excited to get other people involved in using it. I have a lot more planned for the site in the future!

Check out the site when you have some time and let me know what you think. Pass it on to any cycling friends that you think might be interested.