Zmanim Map 3.5 adds Date and Algorithm Selection

Vintage Map with CompassThe Zmanim Map was recently updated to version 3.5. This new release adds a number of new features (listed below), and some technical changes over the previous Zmanim Map 3.0 release. With this release, the main focus of the map has shifted to the zmanim tabs. The direction to Yerushalayim tab with davening directions using both the rhumb line and great circle route to Yerushalayim is still present, but is no longer the default tab.
Zmanim Map v3.5

  • The date can now be selected by the user. In previous versions the date was always the current date on the user’s computer (though the map always supported passing the date on the URL using the undocumented date=1969-02-08 parameter). The current date is still the default, but the user can now change the date.
  • The calculation algorithm is now selectable. The Zmanim API supports both the USNO and NOAA algorithms. The map has always used the USNO algorithm, and this remains the default, but users can now use the NOAA algorithm.
  • The Zmanim tab is now the default tab. This reflects user feedback indicating that most people use the map for zmanim.
  • An About tab now provides a mini user guide and general information about the map.
  • The timezone look-up now uses the Google Time Zone API. Previously the map had been using the Geo Names web service. Since the elevation service also uses Google, the change to a single stable source will hopefully result in fewer outages.
  • The currently selected tab persists across location changes, so if you were viewing zmanim for a location, and changed the location to see how the zmanim were affected, you will no longer have to change tabs after each move.
  • Candle Lighting was added for Fridays. Erev Yom Tov will not show candle lighting at this point.
  • Performance improvements, minor enhancements, bug fixes and refactoring

Bearing to Yerushalayim and Zmanim Map 3.0

Vintage Map with CompassThe Bearing to Yerushalayim and Zmanim Map was recently updated to version 3.0. This new release adds a number of new features to the Zmanim Map version 2.0 update released in March 2010. The main change was updating the Google Map API version from the deprecated v2 to v3. This change increases performance and adds much better support for mobile browsers. The upgrade also means that a Google Maps API key is no longer required. This makes it easy to drop it into any site without any configuration (contact me for details). Zmanim tab v3The technical notes on the original Technical Information about the Bearing to Yerushalayim Map post are still relevant, with very little having changed since the initial implementation.

The following is a partial list of the new features:

  • A number of additional zmanim in the More Zmanim tab, including tchilas and sof zman kiddush levana (if they occur on that day)
  • A link to download a 12 month Zmanim calendar directly from the map (using the same spreadsheet used in the Zmanim Calendar Generator). Clicking on the link from the Zmanim tab will generate a calendar with most typically used zmanim, while clicking on the link in the More Zmanim tab will download the full set of zmanim. These are available as the Calendar Type option in the Zmanim Calendar Generator
  • Increased use of jQuery and jQuery UI for formatting the zmanim tables to better match the site look & feel
  • Refactoring to make the code more robust and slightly more maintainable
  • Timezones for all of Israel now display the timezone of Asia/Jerusalem as opposed to the Asia/Gaza returned for parts of Israel by the GeoNames TimeZone web service

From a technical perspective there were a number of changes required due to updating the Google Maps API from v2 to v3. These include:

  • v3 no longer supports tabbed info windows, so the tabs are now implemented using jQuery UI
  • Renaming of a number of classes and functions such as GLatLng to LatLng
  • A number of functions that were part of API v2 were removed in v3. One example is the removal of radians in the LatLng that had been available and was replaced by the google.maps.LatLng class. These missing functions required for the direction to Yerushalayim calculations are now supported in the Zmanim Map using prototypes

Bearing to Yerushalayim and Zmanim Map 2.0

Vintage Map with CompassThe availability of the Bearing to Yerushalayim and Zmanim Map was originally announced on December 30, 2007. At the time there were a number of bugs related to the Google Map API. These bugs were reported to Google and eventually fixed. Since that time, the only change was a minor JavaScript fix for IE. The Bearing to Yerushalayim worked, but the zmanim tabs had a major issue because the timezone calculated was done based on the user’s current browser timezone. This made it tricky to check zmanim in a different location or timezone than the user’s current timezone.Zmanim tab using timezonesI recently updated the map to look-up the actual timezone of the latitude and longitude selected by the user. This was implemented by doing a look-up at the geonames.org timezone web-service. The timezone is passed to the Zmanim API and used to generate the XML output of a list of daily zmanim that is displayed in the map. Since the Olson timezone database changes a few times a year, there will almost certainly be cases where the proper timezone can’t be determined. Some of these are changes of timezone names, such as the change from Asia/Calcutta to Asia/Kolkata (my host will not run the TZ Updater tool). In these cases, a simple mapping between the old and new was added to the map. In cases where the timezone can’t be determined the timezone will default to GMT. Ocean locations within 10 km of land will use the closest landmass, but anywhere beyond 10 km will default to GMT. One issue with using the geonames.org webservice, is that when it is down, the map will timeout. I experimented with various ways of dealing with this, but unless my host updates the Java version from 1.4, they are too complex to use at this time.

See the Technical Information about the Bearing to Yerushalayim Map post for technical details about the original implementation.