Several upgrades to the City Limits on Google Maps tool

Following on from the enhancements to the County Lines on Google Maps tool, I’ve made several improvements to the City Limits on Google Maps tool as well:

1. In addition to the city limits drawing, you can optionally choose to show county lines as well.  Just check the “Also show county lines” checkbox in the bottom left corner of the map:

2.  There are a couple of enhancements related to Latitude/Longitude or GPS coordinates.  The first one is that the Latitude/Longitude of the place you clicked on (or typed) appears at the bottom of the map (Also, the area of the city in square miles now appears below the map too).  The other new feature is that you can now type GPS coordinates into the “Search places” box above the map.  For example, let’s say you have a GPS coordinate of 105.25° W, 40° N.

The format for typing GPS coordinates into the map is Longitude first, Latitude second.  Longitudes west of the Greenwich Prime Meridian* are always a negative value, as are latitudes south of the equator.  So in this example, you would type -105.25, 40 and a drop-down menu will appear with the fully formatted coordinates for you to click on.  Like this:

3. Some users commented that it was sometimes hard to see the city limits of the city you’re looking at when that city is adjacent to a lot of other cities in a metropolitan area, for example.  To help with that, your selected city’s boundaries are now highlighted in brighter red and its interior shaded light yellow to help it stand out a bit (note I didn’t want to shade the yellow too dark or it will obscure the roads and other map features within the city you’re looking at).  Here’s an example showing Rochester, New York:

4. You can now use your current location by clicking the “⊕ Locate” button in the upper right corner of the map.  The Locate button will be more accurate on smartphones and other devices containing a GPS; desktop browsers typically show an approximate location.

5. One final enhancement, per user request:  you can click the “☐ expand” button in upper right to get a larger map window optimized for your particular screen size.  After expanding the map, click the “☐ reset” button in the upper right to return to the original map size.

Be sure to read the coverage notes and usage tips below the tool.

I hope you enjoy these enhancements!  Feel free to leave comments below.

P.S.  Also, thanks to all those who have taken a few moments to provide feedback on the tools in the user surveys!  I’m receiving really good feedback, and am humbled at the number of great things people are using the tools for.  I’ll aim to provide some high-level summaries of the survey results in the next couple of weeks.  If you haven’t provided feedback yet, and would like to, please find the details here.  I very much appreciate it!

* By the way, speaking of the Greenwich Prime Meridian, I’ve also released a new tool that shows Time Zones on Google Maps.  With it, you can see the time zone boundaries, time zone name, GMT offset, and the current local time anywhere in the world!  Be sure to read the usage notes and coverage info below the tool.  Here’s a sample screenshot, with city/county details shown: