Finding A Location

One of the main activities on Hill Country Explorer is finding locations to explore. There are a couple of different ways to find a specific location or browse for activities or sites in a general area. Here are a couple of scenarios.

Finding a specific location by name

  • Type in a portion of the location in which you're interested in the Keywords field of the find locations page.
  • Press the Find button near the bottom of the screen.
  • If any locations in the database matched the keywords you entered they will be included in a table on the Search Results page.
  • Determine which location is the one you're looking for and click on the locations's name to go to the details page for it.

Finding specific types of locations

  • Get to the location type specific "Find ..." page as described in the walk through above. In this example we'll use the find hikes page.
  • In this case we'd like to find hikes between 5 an 10 miles in length that people have enjoyed a lot. So first, we enter "5" and then "10" in the Distance fields.
  • Then we select 4.0 in the first Enjoyability pull down list. By keeping the second list unchanged at 5.0 we'll search for hikes that other users have said they really enjoyed.
  • Press the Find button at the bottom of the form.
  • A list of locations that match the supplied criteria is displayed on the results page in tabular form. Click on a location name to go to its detail page.

Browsing sites on a map

  • Click on the Maps link in the menu on the left hand side of every page.
  • Click and drag your mouse over the map to scroll the view. The arrow buttons in upper left hand corner of the map display can also be used to scroll.
  • Double click on the map to zoom in, or use the + and - buttons on the upper left hand side of the display to zoom in or out.
  • Hover the mouse over an icon on the screen to see its name.
  • Click on an icon to open a new window with details about the location in question.

Browsing sites near your location

  • If your browser supports the W3C geolocation standard the Maps page's option to center the map will include an additional selection entitled, "My Location".
  • Select "My Location" in the pull down list and press the "Center" button next to it.
  • Your browser may have a dialog window show up asking if it is OK to share your location with Hill Country Explorer. Press yes and optionally check any box that indicates that this acceptance should apply to future requests.
  • The page will center the map on the location that it can best determine where you are located. Note that the accuracy of this location depends on how your browser was able to determine your location. Mobile browsers should be fairly accurate. Browsers using broadband or dial up connections might show their location to be the location of your web provider or the center of your city regardless of your actual location in that city.