IssueTracker

I second the motion: please add an option to disable continuous zoom.

In my case we have just migrated from v2 to v3 and all of our icons have begun to experience a momentary increase/decrease in size during each scroll action (didn't happen in v2 becase we didn't have continuous zoom switched on).
 
This is now causing confusion amongst our user base, so it would be great to be able to prevent it from happening by switching off continuous zoom.

Continuous zoom appears to be causing a regression bug within FireFox 4 when using custom overlays.

As a premier customer, this is a big deal.  Having the ability to disable this feature would allow us to mitigate the effect as a solution is determined.

William,

What is the regression? Is it limited to FF4 only? Could you post a demo link please?

Continuous zoom is crap. Try zooming with the slider from z=18 to z=0 and Firefox hangs for 30 seconds. Give us a way disable this please!! Even better disable by default cause it's crap, then let people enable it if they want it.

If it was such a great feature why doesn't maps.google.com use it???

I say if the zoom level changes +/- more than 1 then don't use the feature. If you're just stepping incremently between zooms, I guess it works okay. Or Animate the transition over a longer period of time, but then that'll take too long.

you really notice this problem when using the fitBounds() function...

the transition animation is quite processor intensive and runs extremely slowly on older machines. It takes several seconds to transition between map and aerial views. I would definitely like the option of disabling all animations in the API so that I can offer this option to my users via a check box.

I really need this fixed in a hurry because I'm going to make some videos about my project http://beta.findtoilet.dk to participate in some competitions and see how it looks http://beta.findtoilet.dk/DIV/issue_3033+3371.jpg and :-(

I third the motion for disabling continuous zoom

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It looks like the bugs is solved but I never got any mails about this. Can someone confirm? And thanks a lot.

From what I see with the Kindle 3 the default operation for zoom is the same. Large changes in zoom amount go instantly to the new level whereas +- 1 changes animate. With the Kindle 3 this causes the screen to flash 3 to 4 times as the zoom animates.

-Al

I don't see where in the documentation there is a way to disable the zoom animation.  I see it for markers but not zoom. Please comment on how to disable the zoom animation.

Possibly I am misinterpreting the original problem description. The problem I see is that when you zoom +-1 steps then it appears to animate in that multiple map displays occur. With a fast display it probably is not a problem but with the Kindle 3 where the display update is quite slow it is quite noticeable. My website is www.kindlemap.net .

Thanks,
Al

I am seconding Al's previous comment, just restricting the animation to larger zooms is not the solution I was hoping for either.

3.5 June 8, 2011
Resolved issues:
Fixed: Zoom no longer animated if change in zoom level greater than 2 ( Issue 3033 )

In my opinion, there should be an option or property that one could set on the map object to enable or disable animation for everything globally

I concur. This should have been marked "Won't fix" if there will not be a map option like {animatezoom:false} -- which is what was originally asked for!

Sure. Semantics. There's no way to disable it but we fixed the root problem.

I wouldnt call it fixed either.

For me the biggest reason to be able to disable the continious zoom is prevent the markers changing size during the animation.  

32px markers can easily become about 150-200px during rapid zoom-out.

Getting smaller during zoom-in isn't as distracting, but its still undesirable. (IMHO)


(IE doesn't get continuous zoom, so a code-path for non-continuous zoom has to be maintained anyway)

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Well if this bug isn't going to be fixed, I opened another similar ticket here - specifically addressing the "Zooming/Stretching" effect that occurs on markers inside of a Custom OverlayView.  As this is really what is killing my production applications.

http://code.google.com/p/gmaps-api-issues/issues/detail?id=3397

Well, no, you didnt' fix the root of the problem because the root is that zoom animation is something not under user control. That's what I requested.

Thanks a lot.

Can a Google engineer please elaborate on what was fixed? I've got a map with lots of markers animating reeeeaaalllyyyyy slowly (latest Chrome) and I'd love to turn off the animated zoom.

What was 'fixed' was now the API doesnt use continuous zoom when changing more than 2 zoom levels at once.

This addresses one of the undirsable affects of the continuous zoom. It doesnt address them all :(

Andybak, you should probably star
http://code.google.com/p/gmaps-api-issues/issues/detail?id=3266

I am really confused as to why the ability to disable continuous zoom is protected. It was exposed when it was first released, forcing animation is ALWAYS a bad idea; especially when working with JS. Even on the chrome browser, with all of its wonderful JS improvements, if I do only several operations (or even having a tile layer overlay); the bad performance is noticeable.

I agree - I just went to try to figure out how to turn it off, and I can't! Please allow this to be an option, thanks! :)

I've been working on a client project recently,
and I was so frustrated until I found an easy workaround for this issue.

1) Override the mousewheel event: http://www.adomas.org/javascript-mouse-wheel/
Instead of applying the event to the window object, attach it to the maps container to not affect other page components.

2) Now, when the mousewheel event is triggered, instantly hide all markers from the map (you probably got them stored in some array). After that, according to the »delta« value of above mentioned script, zoom in or out with the setZoom function.

3) When the zoom (or even drag) interaction has finished, the map triggers the »idle« event. Use this one to restore all markers by setting them to visible again.

This is the only solution I have figured out so far.
The only thing that remains is replacing Google's default zoom control. You will probably have to disable it and replace it with your own one. This is still in progress in my case.

There's been no comments on this for a few months but I want to add my voice to the chorus here. Enforcing animation on zoom is bad. Developers should be able to disable it. I have a project that uses many map overlays and in Chrome the animation makes the zoom transitions very slow. The net result is that often my project functions better in other browsers, which is surely NOT the result Google would want.

It surprises me that the Google Maps devs don't seem to understand how irritating this is for other developers.

I have the same problem on my machine with Chromium Embedded. If I add overlays like the directions renderer it seems that rendering couldn't be finished correctly. Very often it shows very ugly tile-mirroring (the tiles are displayed upside-down) or other graphic waste on zooming. Sometimes the directions renderer isn't displayed anymore.

*WHY* is there no option to disable the animated zoom?
I agree with comment #25 and #28. Developers (and users!) should be able to switch off animations, especially in JS environments.

I believe the problem is that the Google engineers work with the latest high end computers, so they are incapable of noticing the issue.

Well, you can disable the map chunks fade-in/fade-out transitions adding an !important CSS rule to the map:

* {
  -webkit-transition-property: none!important;
  transition-property: none!important;
  /* These doesn't affect anything, but, just in case. */
  -webkit-animation: none!important;
  animation: none!important;
}

It does increase the overall performance a bit while loading the map, but the zooming animations are still there, I believe those are made in the canvas, and I think are done by JavaScript...

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Been in contact with Google Maps premiere support.
There is an undocumented setting in the map options that does this (at least on v3.9):

gMap.setOptions({
  animatedZoom: false,
  ...
});

The map.setOptions({animatedZoom:false}) trick doesn't work for me.

So much for "lighter" code in v3...

Is there any motivation - somewhere, anywhere - for why this is set to Wont Fix?

For all the reasons mentioned in the previous comments, this would be an excellent improvement to the API. There doesn't seem much feedback from the maintainers on this issue.

1) The developers dont think its needed. Adding it as a documented feature, would mean a long term commitment to maintain it. With every new release of the API, would then have to test animatedZoom set both to true and false on very browser. Lots of additional testing (and hence rounds of bugfixing).

2) Brand dilution, and inconsistency to users. Users get used to Google Maps working in a certain way, with an option it will invariably mean different maps will work differently. Real or not, its a consideration that it could.  

The Google Maps API is currently the only Mapping API that does not allow the disabling of animation. There are very valid reasons for being able to disable animation especially if you are doing more than just show some markers on a map.

This is just bad form essentially enforcing what amounts to an aesthetic. It also feels subtly patronizing.

I have figured out a code hack to disable continuous zoom. You need to call map.panTo(map.getCenter()); right after you call setZoom.

function noContinuousZoomIn() {
map.setZoom(map.getZoom() + 1);
map.panTo(map.getCenter());
}

I have no idea the performance implications of this but it effectively allows you to disable the animated zoom.

This is very much needed still, why has this not been added! We are experiencing crashes with a large number of layers which doesn't occur if the zoom level is increased by more than 2

Please make "animatedZoom" - some applications don't require this.

Is there fix my prolem? nah please help me i really hope animatedZoom of property.

goodevs! i wish release this

The map.setOptions({isFractionalZoomEnabled:true})  worked for me (v3.53)