[jcoffland]

The interface on windyty.com is better. It does not have the problem of filling up your browser's history with every move you make. I would like to be able to see the color scale key with out also having to open the full control panel.

[pmarreck]

Every new view should get a URL. That makes every view linkable. People who do not do this are actually violating the spirit of the HTML/URL specs. The fact that you see your browser history as polluted is an implementation detail that could be rectified by simply collapsing all consecutive URL's from the same domain over N url's into a hierarchical dropdown.

[dandelany]

It can also be (sort of) rectified through judicious use of history.pushState vs. replaceState. The latter just replaces the URL in your URL bar but doesn't add an entry to your history - so every new view can get a new URL without polluting history.

I say "sort of" because everyone has their own idea about which things should be pushed vs. replaced. One person's "history pollution" is another's useful tool. But in this case it seems pretty clear that simply moving the map shouldn't push to history.