tooltip bug? update or cache issue? documentation issues.

[mroswell]

I was up all night dealing with quirky TileMill or MapBox issues.

I created this map--which MoveOn.org may feature on their home page, if we get it working. http://tiles.mapbox.com/mroswell/map/rush-station-petitions

1. When I zoom in, tooltips work. However, when I zoom out, they don't. Is this fixable?
2. I discovered throughout the night that the initial map would load, but subsequent map edits wouldn't update. It almost seemed that I was being blocked from the site. A whole new project worked, but then I wasn't successful with further updates to the new one. By near-afternoon light, it appears that most of updates I did "took," afterall. However, this project also has the same plus-button-tooltips-appear, and minus-button-tooltips-don't issue: http://tiles.mapbox.com/mroswell/map/rush-stations
3. Is there a way to clear the TileMill cache? I know how to do it in chrome, safari, and firefox. But perhaps there was a caching issue in TileMil? The reason I thought that cache-clearing was an issue: an exact copy of the project on my local machine suddenly seemed to honor red-circle.svg file's black border, and size, which in the original project was not being honored. Maybe its's not a caching issue, though, since the live 'rush-stations' project still doesn't show that border, while 'rush-petition-stations' does.
4. I found the documentation to be so concise that it literally took me all night to to get to the code I finally used, at #1356 The documentation seemed more designed to serve as a reminder for someone who already knew exactly how to implement the syntax. For instance:
   • I tried entering whole URLs, including "http://" into the 'point-file' property, which failed.
   • (It would've been nice to have an admin interface for creating the image subdirectory.)
   • The point-transform scale operation didn't work without an image. Although simply adding 'point-placement:centroid' actually put dots there, those dots wouldn't resize. (I kept trying a bunch of varieties of transform statements, before realizing that it simply worked on images, and not those dots)
   • without sample code, for some reason I was trying "1" and "YES," while forgetting about "true" for the 'point-allow-overlap' property. So it took me a long time before the tooltips worked at all. (Then, because of the issue reported in item #1 above, it still worked intermittently.

I hope this report of my struggle helps someone. For now the only replicable "bug" seems to be the zoomout tooltip issue. And as I try to do some refinements, I'll see if I'm also having update or caching issues. As for the documentation issues: perhaps by documenting where I ran aground, the docs can be improved.

I'm close to where I want to be. I got an "OMG this is awesome" note from MoveOn staff this morning.

[tmcw]

Hey,

I'll check out the other issues - have you seen http://mapbox.com/carto/ ? It intends to be a reference that also documents how to enter values like boolean: http://mapbox.com/carto/#boolean

[willwhite]

You might want to post more timely requests about MapBox Hosting service on support.mapbox.com as the support team can get to it faster.

1. Toolstips seem to be working on all zoom levels on this map https://tiles.mapbox.com/mroswell/map/rush-station-petitions. Is it still not working on your end?
2. The update lag you were seeing is normal. See "A note on updates" on http://mapbox.com/hosting/uploading/.

Thanks for the feedback on the other points. We can work some improvements into our next sprint.

[mroswell]

I did finally find that precise link, which is why I finally got it. I had previously been using the tilemill software documentation, which didn't offer that detail. Thanks for the link: it's on my radar now, and I'll know how to find it again.

[mroswell]

@willwhite thanks for your note.

1. Still not working on my end. Works. Then zoom in, and tooltips work. Then zoom out, and no more tooltips. Zoom back in, and they work. Sometimes, even upon zoom-in, they don't work. But usually just upon zooming out.
2. While climbing the carto learning curve, I was mostly assuming that I was using bad code. Until the wee hours of the morning when I figured out: d'oh, it was a server issue. Why would I be an "anonymous" user? I have an account....
3. Since I have several versions of the project, and they look quite similar, is there a way to see what the project name is, from within TileMill? The date and time appear below the div, but I could see the very tops of the numbers, and saved the current one, to determine which project it was. "Project settings" offers a name, which appears in the title bar. it would be helpful if we could also see which project is connected to which specific directory.

[willwhite]

1. I am seeing the interactivity issue now after zooming in the way you described. Can you open a separate discussion for this on http://support.mapbox.com and we'll be able to look for a fix.
2. I understand the confusion here and we have some ideas to make this better. Were you logged in at the time you clicked on the button in TileMill to open the tileset preview in your browser?
3. Not sure I follow #3--maybe you could open a separate feature request with more details?

[mroswell]

1. Per your guidance, I started a separate discussion on the MapBox support site. (I also see the same quirky tooltip behavior in TileMill, sometimes.)
2. I think I was logged in. I'm not sure. Maybe not. I figured since it was updating my maps on my account, I was logged in, but maybe I wasn't. That's helpful guidance. Next time I'm working in TileMile I'll visit the MapBox site first, and login!
3. Will try to elucidate the third item (when I'm more awake :)

You guys are amazing with your prompt support. I really appreciate it.

[willwhite]

Great. Thanks so much for the feedback. It is much appreciated.

[mroswell]

Just a note that this map did, indeed, land on the home page of MoveOn.org http://front.moveon.org/wishing-you-could-get-rush-limbaugh-off-of-a-radio-station-near-you/

Yay.

[springmeyer]

this looks resolved. @mroswell - can you confirm that the interactivity issues were fixed? And if so, how?

[mroswell]

@springmeyer : I have no evidence that the tooltip issues were resolved. The tooltips-don't-display-sometimes issue is not unique to mapbox, but also occurs inside tilemill. Has any action been taken to fix the issue? (I do not have permission to Reopen the issue, or I would.)

[springmeyer]

re-opening.

[sk1p]

I think this is fixed in latest wax, have you tried the map on http://mapbox.com/wax/ ?

[springmeyer]

@sk1p - do you know what was broken?

[sk1p]

Unfortunately I had no time to track this down, yet.

There is also a different failure mode, if you zoom out, while the mouse hovers a feature. Then the tooltip stays stuck in hovered move, mouse cursor too. Interactivity goes back to normal when zooming again, panning the map or resizing the viewport.

[springmeyer]

okay, cool, good lead, thx

[springmeyer]

Lots of work has happened on wax and MM recently, so I'm going to assume this is fixed now fully. If not, we'll need to new issues opened against TileMill after the new release lands. Closing.