Usability of Maps/Directions Web sites

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Every time I need to look at a map or get driving directions at one of the popular mapping Web sites (MSN, Google, Expedia, MapQuest), I always get stumbled how inconvenient is it to enter addresses. Most often I have an address in e-mail or listed on some other Web page and typically it consists of two lines: street part and city/zip part. I select the address and copy it. Now I want to paste it somewhere. But none of the sites above allow you to paste multiline information!

MSN used to be able to do that, and I loved it, but now it is gone and Windows Live behaves the same way Google Maps does (sigh). At least Windows Live allows pasting of the multiline addresses into To and From fields in the Driving Directions side bar.

Google wants you to paste single line, so I am ending up pasting street part and typing city and zip. MapQuest and Expedia expect you to enter address in three fields: street, city and zip. Considering that typically I need to fill From and To, that is six field to handle!

Or am I doing it all the wrong way?

Comments

  • Anonymous
    March 10, 2006
    Google USED to do some feat of javascript that would allow you to paste multiline information and it would replace the breaks with spaces.  It doesn't seem to do that anymore.  I definitely have felt the loss of that feature on a number of occasions.
  • Anonymous
    March 10, 2006
    The Google Toolbar allows you to paste multiline text. From there you can click the link to Google, Mapquest, Etc
  • Anonymous
    March 11, 2006
    By coincidence, Jeff Atwood recently had a post (with many comments) about entering address information into Web pages:

    http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000532.html
  • Anonymous
    May 01, 2006
    Yahoo Maps Beta accepts a single parameter