You can look at Gabi's solution at http://openseamap.he1ix.org/map.html
Nice styling of the control buttons.
and Dirks solution at http://maps.grade.de/ol3.html
Good presentation of background maps - they are not as intrusive as the raw OSM map
Object query gives raw tag values - a non-expert plain language mode would be good.
Neither have a lat/lon grid or an edit button - the most important one for mappers!
]]>It would be great if we could put builds of the various contenders on one of our servers so that others could look at the end results. Then us non-webbies could view them with our browsers.
You can look at Gabi's solution at http://openseamap.he1ix.org/map.html
and Dirks solution at http://maps.grade.de/ol3.html
- as said, things I consider useful are (see first post in this thread)
-- rewrite URL
-- overpass.api query
-- geolocation with map orientation
- http://tiles[1-3].grade.de is my tileserver based on http://tilestache.org/
- tiles.py is the api call
- proxy tile providers:
-- openriverboatmap/{z}/{x}/{y}.png
-- NAUTHIS_SkinOfEarth/{z}/{x}/{y}.png
-- ncp_diepte14/{z}/{x}/{y}.png
-- ijg_diep_2013/{z}/{x}/{y}.png
-- seamark/{z}/{x}/{y}.png
- mbtile provider:
-- cemt/{z}/{x}/{y}.png
First of all: This is no new project.
I started a discussion on this topic in a separate thread.
We need to decide what the online map should do. There are a lot of sites only displaying a map everywhere in the web. Do we only want to display another "look at my cool layer collection" solution? I think everyone can do this on his own. We do not need a new project for this. How much more or less usable layers do you want to have? The real goal (rendering our own layers, creating maps for chart plotters and so on) get more and more invisible.
I do not want to wildly collect layers, but I thought that this thread was on what is there and how we should integrate it. This does not mean that we need to integrate everything at the end but adding and removing layers is usually pretty easy, so I do not see a problem in collecting what we have first. In contrast to me, Dirk is more interested into rivers than the sea, so it is only natural that we would like to have to different layers included.
Restricted zoom levels
The weather is only working from z4 to z7 on other zoom levels you will see nothing. If weather is selected, automatically zoom to a feasible level. Otherwise the user will see nothing and gets confused. Also prevent the possibility to zoom into other levels than the allowed ones. If weather is deselected, zoom back to the last used zoom level and position of the base map.
This will probably not only affect the weather layer. My idea was to restrict layers to certain zoom levels and make this transparent to the use (e.g. in the layer selection).
Weather page in general
On the first selection I will not see any weather layer (z6). Need to zoom in and out to get it loading (Firefox on Linux). Do not display all weather layers on the first load. This is confusing (no usable information)
See comment above. Default settings for displaying layers can easily be changed. I see my map in a prototypical state and I did not optimize such aspects, yet.
I do not like the layout. The sidebar is not usable to display large content The icons (with no text) are not intuitive. You need to click around to find the needed information.
I don't like the old layout but as you wrote regarding your map, this is mostly css and can be changed. I think layout is something that should be discussed independently (and maybe in a separate thread). The sidebar has been inspired by other modern maps (e.g. openstreetmap). It's existence does not mean that there cannot be larger display areas for some content. And it is only a div...
With "as desktop" I mean, that there is no need to have an additional web site for help, information, news and so on. Everything can be displayed using additional dialogs on top of the map, if selected. I have all this features in place. That is why the code base seems to be large regarding to the displayed layers.
I fully agree with you regarding the role of the map as entry page. I do not agree that this is the solemn reason for the size of your code base.
I am missing in your map:
- No cookies for position, zoom and selected layers (later on selected language)
- No internationalization
- No overpass.api query to gather additional information
- No coordinate grid
- No help links and about information
- No map key
- No possibility to load additional html content into dialogs
- Cookies for zoom and position still need to be implemented (which is easy). I expected cookies for selected layers to work. Can you tell me how I can reproduce the unintended behaviour?
- Internationalization: Agreed, that will definitively be necessary
- Overpass: That's what I wanted to integrate first from Dirk's map
- Coordinate grid: With OL3 this is not as easy as with OL2 because there is no layer that provides it including labels. I have an implementation (cf. http://openseamap.he1ix.org/openlayers3/map.html) that I just need to add.
- Help links and about: I did not want to include these before having internationalization in place
- Map key: I am no convinced that hard-coding them into the map is the right way to go. I would first want to inquire whether it is somehow possible to do this in a spirit as it is for example standard with WMS layers (the layer provider provides the key, so that it is guaranteed that map and key stay in sync).
- No possibility to load additional html content into dialogs: Was not necessary so far but should be straight-forward.
@Olaf_H do you have any JavaScript blocker in your browser? The weather layers are working absolutely fine, for zoom levels 1-7.
I do not believe that 1-3 are working. scnr ;-)
]]>We need to decide what the online map should do. There are a lot of sites only displaying a map everywhere in the web. Do we only want to display another "look at my cool layer collection" solution? I think everyone can do this on his own. We do not need a new project for this. How much more or less usable layers do you want to have? The real goal (rendering our own layers, creating maps for chart plotters and so on) get more and more invisible.
Now to the general questions above:
Restricted zoom levels
The weather is only working from z4 to z7 on other zoom levels you will see nothing. If weather is selected, automatically zoom to a feasible level. Otherwise the user will see nothing and gets confused. Also prevent the possibility to zoom into other levels than the allowed ones. If weather is deselected, zoom back to the last used zoom level and position of the base map.
Weather page in general
On the first selection I will not see any weather layer (z6). Need to zoom in and out to get it loading (Firefox on Linux). Do not display all weather layers on the first load. This is confusing (no usable information)
Map in general
I do not like the layout. The sidebar is not usable to display large content The icons (with no text) are not intuitive. You need to click around to find the needed information.
With "as desktop" I mean, that there is no need to have an additional web site for help, information, news and so on. Everything can be displayed using additional dialogs on top of the map, if selected. I have all this features in place. That is why the code base seems to be large regarding to the displayed layers. I am missing in your map:
- No cookies for position, zoom and selected layers (later on selected language)
- No internationalization
- No overpass.api query to gather additional information
- No coordinate grid
- No help links and about information
- No map key
- No possibility to load additional html content into dialogs
@Olaf:
- I was so bold to copy the xml file with the download map data from your repository. I hope this is ok.
- What do you mean with "the problem of the restricted zoom levels"?
- Could you elaborate a bit on what you mean with "as desktop"? What additional information do you mean?
I do not have that much time at the moment, but there are some more issues. I will come back to you after Christmas. It would be great, if we can find a way to merge the best of both worlds.
]]>Some advantages of my code base
- integration of weather map into main map
- more modern design
- so far pure JavaScript
- much fewer code for comparable functionality
Disadvantages:
- no internationalization yet (but straightforward to include)
- Chart download not integrated yet (but Olaf's implementation can easily be ported)
Of course my design is also modular (that was the main reason why I did not build on the OpenStreetMap ol2 implementation).
I restarted a repository with my code (previously it was developed in a subfolder of the OSeaMap online map repository). You can find it at https://github.com/roeger/onlineseamap. Please have a look and let me know what you think. Niko made the current state of the map online available at http://openseamap.he1ix.org/map.html
Dirk is your code somewhere available? I would like to see how easily our code could be merged (I assume quite easily).
I have one or two hours time this evening and plan to reintroduce the German water levels and maybe try to integrate the map download.
Regarding map key (legend): I don't think this should be hard coded in the map implementation but rather be requested from the tile server.
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