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Have you logged on since 7pm tonight. Google maps are no more! Gone forever! We are now having to use OpenStreetMap, which doesn’t seem too bad in the UK but seems to be a complete disaster in North America. Read all about it here and read the US comments – they are not happy! http://blog.geocaching.com/2012/02/new-geocaching-com-maps/#comments
Whole lotta people upset about this, and no surprise. While I’ve been using OSM and OCM a lot already (they’re what’s on my garmin), the loss of satellite and aerial is really difficult to work around for me. Am really quite angry this has been done, and in such a way that has broke many aspects. The mapping options they give are really weak for the UK with two or three just giving white screens.
Fortunately, if you use firefox or chrome, the excellent greasemonkey script is being worked on and the author hopes to have google, OS maps (1:25k), and aerial maps back in play soon.
The script is over here. Broken at the moment since the change, but worth keeping an eye on; http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/109145
Copy and paste the co-ordinates of a cache into google maps. I’ve often done that anyway to use street view to look for parking and footpath signs.
Have installed the Greasemonkey script on Firefox and everything is back to normal, apart from the hybrid satellite and road overlay. Mighty glad as I use satellite a lot, particularly when caching on the Moors.
Phew !There has been a recent update to the script. If you (re)install it, it now includes google maps, satellite & terrain maps.
I have to admit that I have no knowledge of the Greasemonkey script and what its capabilities are. Perhaps those of you who use it could please write a short description and how to instal. Is the use of OS maps, etc licensed or not? If it is so easily available why are the US users so upset about the loss of Google maps if they can instal this instead?
It is quite easy. Go here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/
Click add to firefox
You probably need to restart the browser once that is installed. Then go to:
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/109145
Click on the green button in the top right corner.
Thats it .. go to the geocaching maps and the layers will now have an additional set of maps to choose from.
Oh and it doesn’t just add maps .. it also for instance adds an OS grid reference search facility on the “search fr a cache” page. But read the documentaton on the last page for more info.
Thanks TC, I’ve just followed your very easy instructions and it works perfectly! So why are all those cachers in the US so unhappy? Also how does Google allow its maps to be used like this, but not allow geocaching.com to use them? This works so easily, but for my inquiring brain it asks more questions than it answers! And is this a legitimate solution, ie are we licensed to use these maps, or are we using them illicitly? But I’m not complaining, just interested. Thanks again for this.
Great, isn’t it? I’m actually grateful to GC for breaking everything, ignoring complaints and generally being crap – because it’s spawned something better than it was before.
Oh, and the Bing aerial maps are way more up to date than the google sat ones – they show some rides I cut in my field at home last autumn. Googles’ are back in 2002!
Installed it today, great. Also found a user script that displays the cache height next to the coords on the cache listing page.
Does anybody know if there is a script available to display the correct location of solved puzzle or multi-caches? Groundspeak provided the facility to enter the actual location for these caches, but it was never reflected on the maps. It ought not to be too difficult to do with a script.
I too have now downloaded Firefox and the greasemonkey script and find it works fine! Just great to have the Google maps back, and having access to the OS Maps with cache location layering is a real bonus! Thanks TC 🙂
I am dead impressed with the additional layers. Having the OS maps on tap makes planning a caching trip much easier. Thanks to TC for pointing this out. How do you find this stuff out, and what else do you have up your sleeve? I too would be very interested to have puzzle/multi caches shown in their correct position…
I have used Firefox and about 3 userscripts on Geocaching.com since I can’t remember when. They don’t seem to clash with each other. Very useful to get the webpage how you like it. GC little helper is good.
For puzzles and multi’s where one has changed the coordinates it shows them corrected on the links For online maps…. but I’m not sure which, if any of the scripts does that.
There are also greasemonkey userscripts for other sites to remove adverts, show all logs, etc., etc..
They cannot all be trusted, so take care what you download. GH.This has probably been the most useful topic to date on the forum. My thanks to dartymoor for originally drawing our attention to Greasemonkey and to Tamerton Chocolates for updating us. Has anybody seen any mention of this on the US forums, because although they couldn’t get OS maps, they could certainly get Google maps back.
Not really anything to do with geocaching – but adblock plus is another great addition to firefox. I removes virtually all advertisements & banners.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/
Thanks to Tamerton Chocolates I have now downloaded Greasemonkey. I had no idea this kind of stuff was available, and I was impressed at how easy it was to set up. I may now start to look at Dave’s Dartmoor challenges……..
It looks as though after 3 months of constant complaints Groundspeak & Google have patched up their differences and we are back with Google maps, at least for Premium Members. I can find no announcement of this, it just happened last night. There is also no mention of this on the Groundspeak blog, but they are advertising Google maps as an advantage of Premium Membership. I guess we will now see a hike in membership fees. Strangely enough, when using Internet Explorer it does NOT state that you a using Google maps, but Firefox does.
However, this change by Groundspeak seems to have blown our Greasemonkey scripts and I can no longer get the OS maps, just Google maps!
There does seem to be a problem with Greasemonkey and OS maps after the changes by Groundspeak. There is a forum topic here which may eventually help:
Further to Dave’s recent posts re the returning Google maps / OS Maps:
It IS possible to ACCESS OS MAPS
Click on the pane on the LHS of your map page
Locate ”MAP PREFERENCES” at the bottom of this pane and click
Then you will have the OPTION to choose from either the (new) Google Maps or Leaflet
Upon choosing Leaflet, your OS Maps will then magically re-appear where they were in the first place as tiles in the top RH Corner of your map along with the (IMHO) vastly superior Bing Aerial Maps.
Dave has just informed me that he is having trouble accessing the OS Maps using this method, but it’s working fine for me……………………..would be interested to know how other users have found it?So pleased I checked this website! I was somewhat put out to see that OS had mysteriously disappeared and thought it was something I’d done. I’ve followed LympstoneBogtrotters instructions and have got it back again. Many thanks!
Has anyone used IE to sign onto Geocaching recently, i,ve been having trouble accessing the maps on Mozilla and so used IE for the first time in a while. They now have different maps – Thunderforest, Stamen and Esri, along with Mapquest and Open street maps.
Not all the maps seem to work at the moment but most do, Thunderforest looks good.Stopped using Firefox some weeks ago and now prefer Chrome, but Greasemonkey suddenly stopped working on it last night which is most unfortunate as I always use the OS maps, not really interested in anything else. Unfortunately I’ve been far too busy today to do anything about it.
Anybody else having similar problems with Greasemonkey?
Yes, it stopped on my laptop and desktop yesterday, so I’m assuming groundspeak did a minor change somewhere.
However – I upgraded the GME script and it started working again, turns out I was using quite an old one and it hadn’t automatically updated.
OS isn’t working for me in Chrome either, even with the latest GME script….Which makes me sad as I’ve only just discovered it.
Never mind, just saw the author has acknowledged the problem, it’s to do with the changes GS made this week (I thought something was going on as I couldn’t click anything on the map for a couple of hours, night before last).
I have just disabled the userscript on Firefox and got the maps back but they were the same ones i got on IE so it looks like Groundspeak are using different maps now.
Hi All,
I’ve posted this on the post on the Devon Geocachers Facebook page, but I’ve uploaded a semi-working version of the script to my dropbox:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27232874/Geocaching/109145.user.jsThe settings menu (for the plugin) doesn’t work properly, but the OS maps do.
Hi again,
The script creator hasn’t released a new version on the website yet, but I have a new link – https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/27232874/Geocaching/GME.user.js
This one doesn’t break Gmail, but I’ve not managed much other testing.
Well done Tri, that’s gets OS Maps displayed once more on a PC using Chrome. I’m away at the moment and will have to see if that works on my Mac.
Unfortunately the refresh button has disappeared! I hope it gets put back as that was a very useful feature, although it always took you back to the default map, which was a pain.
In order to get the new userscript to work on my PC using Chrome I had to download Tampermonkey and that worked ok. Similarly for my Mac, I have also had to download Tampermonkey. However, the script does not work properly as although it tries to shown you all the map layers it then overwrites it when the maps load. So, no OS maps on the Mac using Chrome at the moment 🙁
A new script has been released tonight which works on my Mac using Firefox, but unfortunately not using Chrome (which is now my preferred browser). I haven’t tried this new script on a PC yet, but the previous version worked ok anyway.
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