Come on. It's a great little service whether there is a map or not. Drop downs with autocomplete work well for choosing countries.

I especially like that there are links to primary sources and that the service is careful when it doesn't know:

"Sorry, we've no information available. We're careful to only use accurate, first-hand information, but have been unable to confirm the visa requirements for Andorran citizens travelling to Angola."

I suppose that OP wanted feedback. Suggestions for improvements aren't criticism, they're free consulting.

"I don't understand the presentation" as a reaction to two massive dropdowns qualifies as consulting these days?

You get what you pay for.

I agree that there's no need for a map and the dropdowns work okay, but I do also agree that it'd be really neat to have a summary into categories. I know this data isn't human written, but I expect they could be classified into yes/no at least extremely naively.

I would disagree. My use case is usually either "I'm considering a vacation in Elbonia, would they let me in", or "OMG, I have a work trip to Elbonia next week, should I get some visa or what?" For both, the big map is useless and the API provided is perfect. Only problem it doesn't cover all countries...

+1 Also, you could preselect the value in the 1st box using Geo-IP DB and/or browser geolocation API[1].

[1] http://diveintohtml5.info/geolocation.html

Your suggestion sounds exactly like <Shameless_plug> Visamapper (www.visamapper.com) </Shameless_plug>

But DoIneedAVisaFor is a more direct way to answer the question if you already know your Destination.

Usually it's pretty easy to get a Visa on arrival at most African countries, yet when I tried to add that, I was asked to log in through either Google or Facebook (I like neither). When I saw that it required my permission to use some data on my Google account even when I'm not using the site, I declined and then got a typical Rails error page.

The permission to use some data is the minimum permission requested (Email address). The intent here is to use OAuth to allow easy logins, not harvest data. BTW, The entire site is open-source at http://www.github.com/udit99/visamapper, so not only can you a) Verify that there is no foul play, but b) send pull requests with alternative login methods.

To verify that there's no foul play, there would also need to be a way to check that the code on github is what is actually running on the site...

I'm not aware of how to implement such a check. Any ideas?

It looks great. Sadly I couldn't find Singapore in this map (well, it has 182 countries listed), but yeah that may happen when we try to cluster all the information in one single page.

I like your site, but why not show the color key below the map?

Thats how I originally had it, then the legend increased in size and refused to fit cleanly under the map and I pulled it out. Would you consider it a huge deal or a minor distraction?

I just tried to visit but got a "can't find the server" error.

I had to drop the www http://visamapper.com/

not sure why. Works right now. Try again?

American citizen should be aliased as well. When I see a list of words like Afghan, Albanian, and Armenian, it makes me think the list describes nationalities as adjectives, not country names. If you ask most US citizens which adjective they'd use to identify their nationality, they'll say American.

All my friends from Canada and South America find this hilarious.

But then South Korea simply calls itself Korea and ignores the north.

The correct demonym for the U.S. in English is "American".

In Spanish it's 'estadounidense' which is cool, but there's no equivalent in English. Anybody who actually cares about the ambiguity of the U.S. demonym probably has too much time on their hands.

Odd, all my friends from Canada and South America find it entirely unremarkable.

So these are people who live outside of the United States that describe their nationality as "American"? Do any of them live in countries that actually have "America" in the name?

Btw. I'm european, even though I don't live in a country that's even part of the EU (we are part of both the EEA and Schengen area, though)...Norway FTW.

One of my canadian friends likes to raise her hand at big meetings when someone asks if there are any americans there.

And if your friend had to choose one and only one descriptor between "Canadian" or "American", what would they say?

No, she just finds it fun that the US has decided to call themselves by the common name of two continents.

I will propose that Norway call itself the United States of Europe and we start calling ourself europeans and poke fun at the EU.

Wouldn't they be North American?

To be honest, I don't think that easy/difficultis that helpful, especially when people usually know where they want to go. Although this text-based answer is not as impressive visually, and could be improved with automatic linking or perhaps using a map to select origin and destination countries, I think it's better to give the information in textual form to avoid misunderstandings.

When people know where they want, they check the consulate of that country. Actually, even if some website tells you that you don't need a visa, you better check the consulate anyway.

On the other hand a map would be an interesting way to see what country you can easily go.

Regarding the US to China route, this is more complicated than it would seem. While getting a visa is probably the easiest solution, there are some situations where it is not required. An example being that you can enter visa-free into Shanghai for 48 hours if you're in transit through the airport.

There are some other odd visa-on-arrival schemes available for places like Shenzhen if you're arriving via Hong Kong (although I think this isn't available to US citizens, only to Australians, and a few other nationalities). I wouldn't be surprised if this is true of some of the other Special Economic Zones as well (e.g. Hainan island). It can be really hard to find this information though, even through official channels.

So this kind of confusion is what the author is up against when collecting data.

Finding an actual authoritative source on Chinese visa requirements has been difficult - there's a lot of second hand information around, but nothing official that I can find.

Indeed. Probably the easiest way to get a Chinese visa these days it to go to Bangkok. Hand your passport to any travel agency on Ko San road and they'll send a guy over to the embassy to sort everything out for you. And somehow it works.

Way smoother than trying to convince the embassy in LA to process your application, and likely more convenient that going to LA in person (which might not even get you anywhere depending on the whims of the Chinese at that moment).

I've visited China through Beijing and Hong Kong numerous times over the last couple years, and without a doubt the best way to do it is through a Visa intermediary such as travisa.com or A Briggs (http://www.abriggs.com). I've used others in the past, but we had an emergency trip about a year ago where one of our fellow travelers needed to go at the last minute (ie, we were leaving on Weds, and they decided to go on the Sunday before), and A Briggs helped us get them a passport and the Chinese Visa, and had it waiting at the airport for our departure. They also have agents you deal with directly.

I'll definitely use them again. The point though, is that for a nominal fee, it's just easier to have someone who does visas every day handle the China situation for you, at least in my experience.

How is the state department an authoritative source for Chinese visa requirements? They change them about every 6 months anyways, the invitation letter is a new thing they started last year.

Well you could follow the link they have to the DC Chinese Embassy: http://www.china-embassy.org/eng/visas/

Even those aren't maintained very well. Best to just have a good visa desk at work that keeps up with all the nuances.

Disagree that your suggestion should be the only option. Many people are going to travel to a country, and yet they can't pick the country on a map. Being able to input the country name is very important.

I would suggest that the user should be able to type the name, or part of it, and have the interface suggest closest matches for the cases (most) where they get it wrong but close enough.

SEO.