Tips & tricks

I picked up a few tips & tricks with crimemapping.com last week that I thought I would pass on to users.

Use the “Print this map” link at the upper right corner just above the map frame, rather than the print command in your browser’s menu or toolbar. This link really doesn't print the page, rather it prepares a new printer-friendly page. After you click the “Print this map” link, try dragging the lower right corner of the map box and stretching it around to your liking. You can also enter any text you wish for a description by clicking the “Notes” link. Once you get the page the way you want it, print it with your browser just like any other webpage.

There are some new graphs and charts available. After the incidents load, click the “Generate reports” link right next to the “Print this map” link. By default, a table of the incidents is produced. But there is also a link to “Summary charts”, with options for pie, bar, and area graphs.

If you check crimemapping.com regularly, you can by bypass the search selection and go straight to Lincoln with this link and a bookmark:

http://crimemapping.com/map/find/Lincoln,

Better yet, if you check your address regularly, you can enter something like this:

http://www.crimemapping.com/map/find/400_S_Cotner_Blvd_Lincoln_NE

If there are more than one incident stacked on top of on another, you’ll see the crime icon with this plus sign symbol in the corner. When you click on the identify tool for that crime, the first one is displayed, with an arrow at the right edge of the balloon to go to the next crime in the stack.

By default, the terrain layer is set as the background in crimemapping.com. If you pick the “maps” layer in the upper right corner of the map, you’ll be able to zoom in quite a bit closer than you can with the terrain layer.

I have three different browsers on my personal and work PCs—each with features that work best with certain sites or in certain circumstances. I confirmed my own non-scientific observations that crimemapping.com screams in Safari for PC or Mac. Internet Explorer 8 is good, Firefox better. All of these beat IE7 by a significant margin. You can display more points and the application runs much more quickly. Haven’t tried it in Opera yet, but if anyone has, I’d like to hear a report.