Bing announced they have revamped their map experience. The maps themselves were redone and actually, there are two different kinds. One for those who install Silverlight on their computers and AJAX version for those that do not install Sliverlight.
Chris Pendleton of Microsoft, I believe a huge map geek, explained the key points:
- Cool colors visually recede allowing warmer overlays to come forward - An elegant backdrop for information delivery and helps content ‘pop’ on the map
- Road color provides greatest differentiation scientifically from red, yellow, green traffic overlays.
- De-saturation on zoom allows more continuous transition to photographic material (Aerial, Birdseye, Streetside) and allows user to focus on street level detail better.
- Designed to work in black and white and to be differentiated by those with the most common forms of color blindness
- Crisp/easy to read font, larger font corresponds to larger roads Lower cognitive load – Less data / clearer details
- Improved international coverage: Data updates deliver improved road and street detail across Central & Eastern Europe, Middle East, Oceania and Asia.
Very nice indeed! Bing and Google are constantly battling on their Maps products and it is a good thing to see.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
