A Winter of Polishing

Time flies, and in the blink of an eye, winter is drawing to a close. How has your winter been? Were you gathered with family in a warm home, enjoying winter sports, or perhaps soaking up the sun in the Southern Hemisphere?

For us, this winter has been an incredibly fulfilling season. Back in November, we decided on our next goal: to focus entirely on product polishing. While we’ve been relatively quiet during this period, it has been the busiest winter since I started this journey. Instead of chasing the next "trendy" feature, we took a step back to eliminate potential underlying issues one by one. Now, I’m excited to share the results of our winter’s work with you:

Markers and Paths

• ✨ Freer Editing: Clicking on a marker or path now brings up an editing menu, allowing you to easily adjust styles, coordinates, and linked text descriptions.
• ✨ Bi-directional Linking: You can now link directly from elements on the map to their corresponding text blocks.
• ✨ Label Support: All three types of markers now support text labels.
• 💪 Search Optimization: We’ve optimized the icon search function and fixed many icons that weren't displaying. You can now intuitively search for icons in various languages.
• 💪 Scaling Optimization: Adjusted the proportions of map markers for different screen sizes (resolving the issue where markers appeared too large on big screens).
• 🔧 Display Fixes: Fixed an issue where popups would sometimes obstruct map markers.
• 🔧 Path Fixes: Resolved errors occurring during path drawing.
• 🔧 Coordinate Fixes: Fixed slight coordinate offsets that occurred when dragging markers quickly.

Map Visuals

• ✨ 3D Building: Now supports the display of 3D buildings.
• 🔧 Display Fixes: Fixed an issue where the "Focus Area" displayed incorrectly when the map was tilted or rotated.

Text Editor

• ✨ More Fonts: Added new font options. We’ve curated six styles: Inter, Manrope, Lora, Playfair Display, Space Mono, and IBM Plex Sans. If there are other fonts you’d like to see, feel free to let us know.
• 💪 Layout Adjustments: Refined the layout design to make reading more comfortable with better "breathing room."

Settings

• ✨ Toggle Display: Added a toggle switch for the "Focus Area."
• ✨ Map Contribution: Launched a data feedback contribution program for OpenStreetMap (OSM).

Camera and Interaction

• ✨ Smart View: Implemented a new camera algorithm. The system calculates the distribution of points of interest (POIs) on the map to automatically find the optimal zoom level. For example, if your points are scattered between New York and Paris, clicking a point in New York will smoothly pan and zoom to a level suitable for "browsing all New York points," rather than zooming out too far (world view) or too close (street view).
• 💪 Free Perspective: Now supports tilting and rotating the map.
• 🔧 Initial Position: Fixed the initial camera position upon map loading. If no linked element is specified, the map will now default to the last area edited in the editor.

Sharing and Customization

• ✨ Embedding: Now supports embed mode. You can embed your maps into Notion or any website that supports the oEmbed protocol.
• ✨ Visual Design: A completely redesigned customization interface, including new map card styles, social media share previews, App icons (for mobile installation), browser tab icons (favicons), and a more convenient image generation tool.

AI Assistant

• 💪 Multilingual Support: The AI map creator now supports translation across multiple languages.
• 💪 Model Upgrade: The AI model has been upgraded and fine-tuned, providing you with higher-quality initial drafts.

App Installation (PWA)

• 💪 Native Experience: Hidden the address bar to make the experience feel more like a native mobile app.
• 🔧 Update Fixes: Fixed automatic update issues after installing as an app.

Stability, Performance, and More

• 💪 New Themes: Adjusted and added several new map theme styles.
• 💪 Tooltip Optimization: More readable and user-friendly tooltips.
• 💪 Smoother Movement: With a new map rendering engine, you should notice that dragging and moving the map feels much more fluid.
• 💪 Natural Animations: Introduced new animation techniques for more natural transitions.
• 💪 Code Slimming: Reduced the code bundle size, resulting in faster loading speeds.
• 💪 Architecture Overhaul: Performed a major refactoring of the underlying architecture to increase system stability and accelerate future development.
• 💪 Quality Assurance: Added over 700 automated tests to significantly ensure the stability of every update.
• 🔧 Rendering Fixes: Fixed a bug where the screen would occasionally turn black.

This represents a fruitful period of work, but it’s not everything. We know there are parts of our previous roadmap that aren't finished yet (such as Classic Mode and Data Import)—please don't worry, we haven't forgotten them. We wanted to build a solid foundation first to ensure future development stands on stable ground. Our goal remains the same: to make it simple and enjoyable for you to create maps that are both beautiful and practical.

Looking back at 2025, we made many attempts—some good, some bad. In the past, we tried to iterate as fast as a Silicon Valley startup, but that led to sacrifices in stability and chaos in development. I believe we have now found a rhythm that suits Tasmap better: we will no longer chase rapid, frequent releases. Instead, we will update on a bi-weekly or monthly cycle to ensure quality and stability.

We will release our Spring Roadmap next month. If you have any thoughts, feel free to discuss them with us on Discord or via email. You are also welcome to follow us on Twitter for product updates.

Look forward to hearing from you.