Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
2009/3/3 Roman Neumüller r.neumul...@gmail.com On Tue, 03 Mar 2009 07:41:38 +0200, talk-requ...@openstreetmap.org wrote: Something that's come up a few times in chatting to people is the front page design of the website and how it's been pretty static for a long time. That's pretty cool as nobody has felt the need to hack it I make a quick poll (1) on which which screen resolution osm'ers are using... (1) http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Poll/Screen_resolution It's taken a while, but I thought the informatoin would be useful, to provide an idea of what is commonly used out there by the masses. I've added some information from google analytics, regarding screen resolution. Save you going to the page, here are the numbers. 1 1024x768 1584597 36.27% 2 1280x800 965533 22.10% 3 1280x1024 661713 15.15% 4 1440x900 391137 8.95% 5 800x600 148672 3.40% 6 1680x1050 118139 2.70% 7 1152x864 91330 2.09% 8 1280x768 78800 1.80% 9 1600x1200 54390 1.25% 10 1280x960 40448 0.93% ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
2009/3/6 Robert (Jamie) Munro rjmu...@arjam.net I hate it when I go on holiday and I can't understand the colours of the maps. A choice of UK Style, German Style, USA Style rendering for the whole world would be nice, particularly if it defaulted to whichever country you were in by IP address geolocation. I'm sure it will be easier to impliment than a single map with inconsistent syle, and I'm fairly confident that the resources required are not huge - particulary as introducing new layer servers reduces the load on the existing single tile server. While I like the idea of having multiple styles available, I have to argue that I don't believe IP address geolocation would be the 'right' way to select a default style... IP address geolocation is something that's heavily overused... If you take your computer with you to Paraguay, do you want the map to default to being centered on your approximate current location? quite probably... but, would you want the entire map/site to show in Spanish/Guarani? Probably not, you'd probably want language to be based on the language headers that your browser advertises it's willing to accept... As far as default style goes, I'd suggest that after failing to find a stored default for that particular user/browser that the user's acceptable languages would provide a better information source for guessing a preferred map style, i.e. if en-gb is the higher priority language, UK style, if en-us, the US style, de, the German style etc... Obviously, it still relies on the machine... If you are using a net bar pc in Paraguay that has a browser configured to suggest it's willing to accept Spanish only then whatever is used in lieu of user details or preference settings isn't necessarily going to be ideal, but, short of making the website telepathic, not much can be done about that... In short, my point is, IP address geolocation can be useful for certain things, but be careful what assumptions are made about a visitor solely based on the location their internet access is provided from and where possible, make it as easy for people to change their preferences to override those assumptions... Regarding the implementation of multiple style layers, first view performance wouldn't necessarily be impacted, but, a larger cache would likely be needed to store the same view with multiple layers without having too much rerendering and for subsequent views of an already rendered area, with 3 layers, there's a significantly increased chance that while other people may have already viewed the same area, they may have used a different layer and as such, the tiles still need rendering... So, the resource requirements would increase somewhat significantly... That said, as you said, additional tile servers would take care of those increased resource requirements... Apologies for the rant about IP address geolocation, as it's currently abused by many sites and companies, it can be very very frustrating :) d ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
2009/3/6 Frederik Ramm frede...@remote.org Hi, Robert (Jamie) Munro wrote: Yuk! No! Don't do this! Why produce half-transparent tiles when you could just carry on producing tiles of the neighbouring countries (or even the whole world) in your national style. As I said, that's the easy bit. We already have the whole world in British colours and I'm sure we will get the whole world in German colours (which actually I hear some cartographers refer to as the Michelin style so it may not be German after all) before we see anything fancy like I described. However, I still think it would be fascinating to produce ONE map (where you can zoom and pan across the world and don't have to stop at borders) and still allow national or even, sometimes, regional groups to define what they want on their part of the map. The practical use for the tourist (explain the world to me in terms I am familiar with) will be limited, but it will be a fantastic tool for those culturally interested. For example, a country in which nature reserves play an important role will naturally want to have them displayed at early zoom levels, and in other countries these might appear as a dotted line on z15. Same for all other kinds of things. The Iceland map will show filling stations at zoom level 8 ;-) and so on. If you don't share the vision then stick to your one size fits all mapping. I'm not saying we should remove that map, but I am sure that if we manage to create an infrastructure supporting something like that, then the rewards will be great. (It doesn't even have to be done by OSM on OSM servers, anyone can do it.) I am also very keen on the grassroots aspect of this. I want people to be able to define their part of the map without having to go via central command (where their request might well be met with we understand that you would like to have this but it has an undesirable side effect on the other side of the earth). If multiple whole world style layers exist then what you suggest would be reasonably simple to acheive, as long as the base styles were reasonably similar and you didn't mind too much if the boundaries were a bit 'messy'... To get a prettier single view of multiple styles with styles changing along borders however would be somewhat trickier to acheive and I guess you'd at least need lower zooms to be rendered with multiple styles able to coexist in a single tile for certain areas at least, i.e. if you wanted a separate UK and Euro style... To split the americas from the rest of the world would be somewhat easier thanks to the large expanses of sea :) d ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
Am Donnerstag 05 März 2009 schrieb Robert (Jamie) Munro: Yuk! No! Don't do this! Why produce half-transparent tiles when you could just carry on producing tiles of the neighbouring countries (or even the whole world) in your national style. As a British person who travels to Paraguay, I want to see a map of Paraguay in UK styles (and probably English captions where available). The Mapnik layer currently gives me that. There's no need to take that away when we implement a Paraguay style map. What we need is entire global renderings in different styles. I hate it when I go on holiday and I can't understand the colours of the maps. same for me (preferring german style). signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
Hi, Robert (Jamie) Munro wrote: Yuk! No! Don't do this! Why produce half-transparent tiles when you could just carry on producing tiles of the neighbouring countries (or even the whole world) in your national style. As I said, that's the easy bit. We already have the whole world in British colours and I'm sure we will get the whole world in German colours (which actually I hear some cartographers refer to as the Michelin style so it may not be German after all) before we see anything fancy like I described. However, I still think it would be fascinating to produce ONE map (where you can zoom and pan across the world and don't have to stop at borders) and still allow national or even, sometimes, regional groups to define what they want on their part of the map. The practical use for the tourist (explain the world to me in terms I am familiar with) will be limited, but it will be a fantastic tool for those culturally interested. For example, a country in which nature reserves play an important role will naturally want to have them displayed at early zoom levels, and in other countries these might appear as a dotted line on z15. Same for all other kinds of things. The Iceland map will show filling stations at zoom level 8 ;-) and so on. If you don't share the vision then stick to your one size fits all mapping. I'm not saying we should remove that map, but I am sure that if we manage to create an infrastructure supporting something like that, then the rewards will be great. (It doesn't even have to be done by OSM on OSM servers, anyone can do it.) I am also very keen on the grassroots aspect of this. I want people to be able to define their part of the map without having to go via central command (where their request might well be met with we understand that you would like to have this but it has an undesirable side effect on the other side of the earth). Of course, even today every country can have their own slippy map and their own tiles and it's happening everywhere already (freemap.sk comes to mind but there are many others). The missing link is (only) a clever OpenLayers extension that would mix'n'match tiles from various national servers. Bye Frederik ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
I just wanted to comment on this point regarding the width of screens. I was using google maps recently where you can remove the side panel and have the entire width available to the map. It looks really daft and I would rather try and maintain a square aspect to the map so that you can see equal distances in all directions. Doug On 3 Mar 2009, 4:35 AM, D Tucny d...@tucny.com wrote: 2009/3/3 Ian Dees ian.d...@gmail.com On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 9:51 PM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: I asked the CM desi... I must say, I like that one too... but... So many sites and applications these days seem to be going with all the options at the top/bottom and a full width content section, while at the same time most 4:3 screens are being replaced with 16:10 screens... Though at least most sites allow the content to be scrolled moving their menu bars out of view, this however, proboably isn't something that would be preferable with the OSM page... The end result being that with a layout like that on a widescreen display, you'll have browser title bar, menu bar, link bar, tab bar, random other tool bars, osm tab bar, small, but, wide, sliver of map, osm key bar, browser status bar and finally task bar... Obviously if you have a big screen with a decent vertical resolution, the sliver of map is somewhat larger and more useful, but, on smaller screens at least, and I'm thinking of screens with a resolution like 1280x800 here that are pretty common in laptops these days, that sliver isn't going to be that big... As such... I think the fp6/7 images would be probably better generally, and especially for smaller widescreen displays... That said, I guess there's no reason, beyond maintainability, why both layouts couldn't be made available, even if only selectable by logged in users... though a default that's good for everyone would still be needed :)... I think all the samples shown are an improvement on the existing layout in term of usability and from an aesthetics point of view, making things clearer and prettier at the same time :) d ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
Robert (Jamie) Munro wrote: Richard Fairhurst wrote: Andy Allan wrote: Quite. Can someone please come up with names for the two main styles that aren't just the technology that creates them? Mapnik - Standard (or maybe 'Classic') I think that the Mapnik layer should be called UK Style. Green trunk roads, Blue motorways etc. are all standard features of British maps, and not in use as much elsewhere. Except maybe one day we'll have the technology to use different colours in different countries - it's not really deliberately a UK style, that is just a side effect of (a) not having support for country specific schemes and (b) the main cartographer doing that layer being UK based. Tom -- Tom Hughes (t...@compton.nu) http://www.compton.nu/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
Frederik Ramm wrote: (I see that for some countries people have put up slippy maps covering only that country. I would love to one day interweave these individual servers by way of a cool getTileUrl OpenLayers function so that you can zoom across Europe and see each country as rendered by the national OSM group ;-) I'm not sure delegating to all sort of different servers is the best way to implement such a thing for lots of reasons. We just need the master stylesheet to be able to take location into account when rendering. Aside from anything else if you did it by delegation the style could only change on the edge of a tile. Then again, I'm not sure it works to be changing styles at a land border anyway - it will look very odd if motorways suddenly change colour because you've reached a border. Tom -- Tom Hughes (t...@compton.nu) http://www.compton.nu/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
Hi, Tom Hughes wrote: I'm not sure delegating to all sort of different servers is the best way to implement such a thing for lots of reasons. We just need the master stylesheet to be able to take location into account when rendering. That's how Google does it of course and it is, issues of scale aside, the easy choice. (And yes their motorway style changes, slightly, at many borders e.g. between Germany and France or Austria; maybe that's to denote toll motorways though and not a specifc national style.) Aside from anything else if you did it by delegation the style could only change on the edge of a tile. No; if done cleverly, national servers could produce half transparent tiles at the borders. I know it would be quite a feat to set up something like this, and every time you view a map of Europe then half the tiles would be missing because the Czech or Austrian or Hungarian or German server had a hiccup at that moment and so on. But it would be a really cool thing to have and help us get away from ugly centralism. We work and map and meet regionally; why not champion an architecture that actually takes this into account. Could make a nice Google SoC project and/or even attract EU funding under some kind of unity in diversity programme. I'm not suggesting to take away your holy central tile rendering; I'm sure that will always be needed to be practical. But an extra project on extra hardware with distributed tiles and nationally or even regionally decided styles... would be nice. Bye Frederik ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Frederik Ramm wrote: Hi, Tom Hughes wrote: I'm not sure delegating to all sort of different servers is the best way to implement such a thing for lots of reasons. We just need the master stylesheet to be able to take location into account when rendering. That's how Google does it of course and it is, issues of scale aside, the easy choice. (And yes their motorway style changes, slightly, at many borders e.g. between Germany and France or Austria; maybe that's to denote toll motorways though and not a specifc national style.) Aside from anything else if you did it by delegation the style could only change on the edge of a tile. No; if done cleverly, national servers could produce half transparent tiles at the borders. I know it would be quite a feat to set up something like this, and every time you view a map of Europe then half the tiles would be missing because the Czech or Austrian or Hungarian or German server had a hiccup at that moment and so on. But it would be a really cool thing to have and help us get away from ugly centralism. We work and map and meet regionally; why not champion an architecture that actually takes this into account. Yuk! No! Don't do this! Why produce half-transparent tiles when you could just carry on producing tiles of the neighbouring countries (or even the whole world) in your national style. As a British person who travels to Paraguay, I want to see a map of Paraguay in UK styles (and probably English captions where available). The Mapnik layer currently gives me that. There's no need to take that away when we implement a Paraguay style map. What we need is entire global renderings in different styles. I hate it when I go on holiday and I can't understand the colours of the maps. A choice of UK Style, German Style, USA Style rendering for the whole world would be nice, particularly if it defaulted to whichever country you were in by IP address geolocation. I'm sure it will be easier to impliment than a single map with inconsistent syle, and I'm fairly confident that the resources required are not huge - particulary as introducing new layer servers reduces the load on the existing single tile server. Robert (Jamie) Munro -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.8 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkmwACAACgkQz+aYVHdncI2Y5ACgznNqvGZ6aBCOae0xXZQ+HC+I 0TUAoKFjtw9pwLfrSI7GKpo7t1VcoUtr =UkrY -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Richard Fairhurst wrote: Andy Allan wrote: Quite. Can someone please come up with names for the two main styles that aren't just the technology that creates them? Mapnik - Standard (or maybe 'Classic') I think that the Mapnik layer should be called UK Style. Green trunk roads, Blue motorways etc. are all standard features of British maps, and not in use as much elsewhere. We should dedicate some resources to making a few other Mapnik-generated layers for US, German and other popular countries styles. We've already got Cycle Map, Piste Map etc. Osmarender - Community Osmarender's lowzoom, which shows all the roads in the db scaled down and down until they are just shades of colour on the map does look beautiful. But in general, and I hate to say this, it is just an uglier map than Mapnik and I don't think it needs to be maintained. The resources it uses for the central tile server and the TRAPI, ROMA and XAPI servers could probably generate and maintain a custom mapnik layer each - possibly more than one. That's not to say it isn't worth having some ROMA and/or XAPI servers around for Sat-Nav and GIS applications to use. It would be nice to have a lowzoom map to look at that is just Mapnik z12 without captions repeatedly stitched and scaled, though - I just love the Osmarender lowzoom layers (when/where they work). Robert (Jamie) Munro -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.4.8 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkmvKewACgkQz+aYVHdncI0KAwCg71fB04HJbuT5hNi4aV/H0IjD LksAn1MRlqEYyUcH4NATC+aEHrq1hkrZ =cepp -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
Hi, Robert (Jamie) Munro wrote: We should dedicate some resources to making a few other Mapnik-generated layers for US, German and other popular countries styles. We've already got Cycle Map, Piste Map etc. Let's not go over the top here; these efforts are private (or sometimes partly company sponsored) but not masterminded by OSMF. If a national community manages to set up their own rendering and tiling then let's link to them and if not then not. (I see that for some countries people have put up slippy maps covering only that country. I would love to one day interweave these individual servers by way of a cool getTileUrl OpenLayers function so that you can zoom across Europe and see each country as rendered by the national OSM group ;-) Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail frede...@remote.org ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
Le jeudi 05 mars 2009 à 01:47, Robert (Jamie) Munro a écrit : I.e. having windows automatically tiled the whole time, making maximum use of screen real estate. When you moved the bottom of one window, for example, you were dragging the top of the window beneath it. While I usually overlap my windows, and don't mind, sometimes the ability to force them into a grid layout would be really useful. You can. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager THere are many such window manager available for X window -- Renaud Michel ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
Ian Dees schrieb: On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 9:51 PM, SteveC st...@asklater.com mailto:st...@asklater.com wrote: I asked the CM designers for some quick hacks on what different front pages could look like which you can see on the wiki page below. There are some very quick ideas there but it's not a full picture by a long way. To get some conversation going: I really like the Fp4.jpg[1] example on the URL you gave, Steve. It's important to make the map (and thus its data) the largest GUI element on the page. The buttons along the top draw my eye up there to see what's available. I also like the Shop link idea. After looking at all of the examples, Fp4.jpg seems to be the one that is the simplest and most eye-catching. [1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Image:Fp4.jpg I also like that. Unfortunately i can´t find a link to the wiki :-) I think the wiki is very important and must get a big link. I also like Fp1.jpg because of the news section. I would change Edit to Edit Map! Jonas ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
Ian Dees wrote: To get some conversation going: I really like the Fp4.jpg[1] example on the URL you gave, Steve. It's important to make the map (and thus its data) the largest GUI element on the page. The buttons along the top draw my eye up there to see what's available. I also like the Shop link idea. It's probably my favourite in many ways, but I don't like the way it has tabs for things which aren't tabs - things like Blog and Shop which would presumably replace the whole page and take you to another site. Unless of course the suggestion is that we would iframe those sites in so they really did behave like tabs. In which case I hate it ;-) Tom -- Tom Hughes (t...@compton.nu) http://www.compton.nu/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
D Tucny wrote: I must say, I like that one too... but... So many sites and applications these days seem to be going with all the options at the top/bottom and a full width content section, while at the same time most 4:3 screens are being replaced with 16:10 screens... Screen size is of course irrelevant to browser window size, unless you're one of those weird web designers that seems to think everybody runs their browser full screen all the time... Tom -- Tom Hughes (t...@compton.nu) http://www.compton.nu/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
SteveC wrote: The other thing that could be better is the search engine optimisation of the front page so that it shows up higher for some search terms like free maps and stuff. Why do I always want to barf when I hear somebody mention SEO... Anyway some thoughts are jotted down here: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Front_Page There are a bunch of open questions like what design elements should stay, what should go, what colour schemes would be neat. Feel free to contribute and if it's useful we can build a design brief based on comments and ideas... then if it's useful to the community we can have them do some more design work to build some cool front page mockups. In some ways of course the design is the easy bit, then we need a volunteer to do battle with javascript and try and implement the changes which is no mean feat on our frontpage I can assure you ;-) Tom -- Tom Hughes (t...@compton.nu) http://www.compton.nu/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
On Tue, Mar 03, 2009 at 09:16:21AM +0100, Jonas Krückel (John07) wrote: Ian Dees schrieb: On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 9:51 PM, SteveC st...@asklater.com mailto:st...@asklater.com wrote: I asked the CM designers for some quick hacks on what different front pages could look like which you can see on the wiki page below. There are some very quick ideas there but it's not a full picture by a long way. To get some conversation going: I really like the Fp4.jpg[1] example on the URL you gave, Steve. It's important to make the map (and thus its data) the largest GUI element on the page. The buttons along the top draw my eye up there to see what's available. I also like the Shop link idea. After looking at all of the examples, Fp4.jpg seems to be the one that is the simplest and most eye-catching. [1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Image:Fp4.jpg I also like that. Unfortunately i can´t find a link to the wiki :-) I think the wiki is very important and must get a big link. Yep in fp4 Wiki is missing and we have User diaries, News and Blog. Without entering in the opengeodata blog war i think they are similar things I also like Fp1.jpg because of the news section. I would change Edit to Edit Map! I prefer fp1. Anyway I think the greatest thing of the new designs is to show the 'Map Legend' -- Celso González (PerroVerd) http://mitago.net ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
On Tue, 03 Mar 2009 07:41:38 +0200, talk-requ...@openstreetmap.org wrote: Something that's come up a few times in chatting to people is the front page design of the website and how it's been pretty static for a long time. That's pretty cool as nobody has felt the need to hack it I make a quick poll (1) on which which screen resolution osm'ers are using... (1) http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Poll/Screen_resolution Roman ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
Hi, Ian Dees wrote: I really like the Fp4.jpg[1] example on the URL you gave, Steve. I'm a bit concerned about the similarity to maps.cloudmade.com; I would not want people to think that OSM was a CloudMade spin-off ;-) then again there's not much freedom, design-wise, in making a page with a large map on it so everyone is probably going to look pretty much the same anyway. Bye Frederik ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
2009/3/3 Celso González ce...@mitago.net: On Tue, Mar 03, 2009 at 09:16:21AM +0100, Jonas Krückel (John07) wrote: Ian Dees schrieb: On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 9:51 PM, SteveC st...@asklater.com mailto:st...@asklater.com wrote: I asked the CM designers for some quick hacks on what different front pages could look like which you can see on the wiki page below. There are some very quick ideas there but it's not a full picture by a long way. To get some conversation going: I really like the Fp4.jpg[1] example on the URL you gave, Steve. It's important to make the map (and thus its data) the largest GUI element on the page. The buttons along the top draw my eye up there to see what's available. I also like the Shop link idea. After looking at all of the examples, Fp4.jpg seems to be the one that is the simplest and most eye-catching. [1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Image:Fp4.jpg I also like that. Unfortunately i can´t find a link to the wiki :-) I think the wiki is very important and must get a big link. Yep in fp4 Wiki is missing and we have User diaries, News and Blog. Without entering in the opengeodata blog war i think they are similar things I also like Fp1.jpg because of the news section. I would change Edit to Edit Map! I prefer fp1. Anyway I think the greatest thing of the new designs is to show the 'Map Legend' You mean like when you click Map key on the current front page? That does bring up a valid point though -- the current page does not make the map controls obvious. The classic one is when you tell someone the front page has multiple styles. The little + sign is just ignored by most people (until you've encountered enough OL sites that use it... then you just can't help but investigate what layers they're hiding). Some of those deigns go with the drop down approach for layer selection... I keep wanting to scream every time I see it say Mapnik.. as if three of the layers there aren't actually rendered using Mapnik anyway :-) I can't imagine what a newbie will think a Mapnik is. Dave ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
2009/3/3 Tom Hughes t...@compton.nu D Tucny wrote: I must say, I like that one too... but... So many sites and applications these days seem to be going with all the options at the top/bottom and a full width content section, while at the same time most 4:3 screens are being replaced with 16:10 screens... Screen size is of course irrelevant to browser window size, unless you're one of those weird web designers that seems to think everybody runs their browser full screen all the time... I guess that makes me a weird web user for always having browsers full screen... Or at least, someone without enough screen space to comfortably do otherwise :(... d ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
D Tucny wrote: 2009/3/3 Tom Hughes t...@compton.nu mailto:t...@compton.nu Screen size is of course irrelevant to browser window size, unless you're one of those weird web designers that seems to think everybody runs their browser full screen all the time... I guess that makes me a weird web user for always having browsers full screen... Or at least, someone without enough screen space to comfortably do otherwise :(... Sure, if I'm on my eee then it will be fullscreen. If I'm on a 1600x1200 desktop, or a 3760x1600 desktop like the one I use at the office, then it won't be. Tom -- Tom Hughes (t...@compton.nu) http://www.compton.nu/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
Hi, Tom Hughes wrote: If I'm on a 1600x1200 desktop, or a 3760x1600 desktop like the one I use at the office, then it won't be. Good for you, because if you displayed our slippy map in 3760x1600 then we would have to block your IP for bulk downloading ;-) Bye Frederik ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
On 03/03/2009 09:42, D Tucny wrote: 2009/3/3 Tom Hughes t...@compton.nu mailto:t...@compton.nu D Tucny wrote: I must say, I like that one too... but... So many sites and applications these days seem to be going with all the options at the top/bottom and a full width content section, while at the same time most 4:3 screens are being replaced with 16:10 screens... Screen size is of course irrelevant to browser window size, unless you're one of those weird web designers that seems to think everybody runs their browser full screen all the time... I guess that makes me a weird web user for always having browsers full screen... Or at least, someone without enough screen space to comfortably do otherwise :(... I've been working on a website recently where the key component is a large picture which they need to see as much of as possible (not dissimilar in what most people would want from a map I guess). I've found my users fall into two distinct camps 1. I've got a big screen, why can't I see more of the picture to make use of it. These people have 1400 pixels or more, some over 2000. 2. It goes off the edge, I have to keep scrolling. A lot of people are still working on screens 1024 pixels wide, which means you're down to the mid 900s once you take all the borders, scroll bars and things into account. Of course, I've changed things to scale within reason so I can keep both happy, but I was surprised quite how many people are still working on tiny screens (and not just because they're on net books - these are ordinary desktop computers; in once case the screen is huge but run at extremely low res because of the user's poor eyesight). David ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
Hey guys gals, get these thoughts onto the wiki! I've added some already: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Front_Page Thanks to Steve the CloudMade designers for giving this some energy! Regards, Tom On Tue, 3 Mar 2009 09:37:29 +, Dave Stubbs osm.l...@randomjunk.co.uk wrote: 2009/3/3 Celso González ce...@mitago.net: On Tue, Mar 03, 2009 at 09:16:21AM +0100, Jonas Krückel (John07) wrote: Ian Dees schrieb: On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 9:51 PM, SteveC st...@asklater.com mailto:st...@asklater.com wrote: I asked the CM designers for some quick hacks on what different front pages could look like which you can see on the wiki page below. There are some very quick ideas there but it's not a full picture by a long way. To get some conversation going: I really like the Fp4.jpg[1] example on the URL you gave, Steve. It's important to make the map (and thus its data) the largest GUI element on the page. The buttons along the top draw my eye up there to see what's available. I also like the Shop link idea. After looking at all of the examples, Fp4.jpg seems to be the one that is the simplest and most eye-catching. [1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Image:Fp4.jpg I also like that. Unfortunately i can´t find a link to the wiki :-) I think the wiki is very important and must get a big link. Yep in fp4 Wiki is missing and we have User diaries, News and Blog. Without entering in the opengeodata blog war i think they are similar things I also like Fp1.jpg because of the news section. I would change Edit to Edit Map! I prefer fp1. Anyway I think the greatest thing of the new designs is to show the 'Map Legend' You mean like when you click Map key on the current front page? That does bring up a valid point though -- the current page does not make the map controls obvious. The classic one is when you tell someone the front page has multiple styles. The little + sign is just ignored by most people (until you've encountered enough OL sites that use it... then you just can't help but investigate what layers they're hiding). Some of those deigns go with the drop down approach for layer selection... I keep wanting to scream every time I see it say Mapnik.. as if three of the layers there aren't actually rendered using Mapnik anyway :-) I can't imagine what a newbie will think a Mapnik is. Dave ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
Tom Hughes wrote: Screen size is of course irrelevant to browser window size, unless you're one of those weird web designers that seems to think everybody runs their browser full screen all the time... IMX it's a platform thing. Windows people genuinely do run their web browser, and most things, full screen. Hence the aberration that is MDI. Us Mac people, by contrast, usually have about 57 different non-full screen windows overlapping - that's why Apple came up with Expose to help us find them all. I dunno what Linux people do - whatever RMS has decreed is in the best interests of some weird notion of freedom, I guess. runs away very very fast cheers Richard -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Front-page-design-and-SEO-tp22302099p22305671.html Sent from the OpenStreetMap - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
SteveC wrote: I asked the CM designers for some quick hacks on what different front pages could look like which you can see on the wiki page below. Very pretty in a sort of let's-polish-the-CSS way, which isn't a bad thing at all. In a let's ask for the stars way, though, how about: - a little draggable I've found a problem icon - yeah yeah, OSB integration :) - something that says Hey! We're a fun community!; maybe two forthcoming events in tiny type? - some visualisation like Mikel's old activity tracker, showing where people have been editing recently - so you get a real sense of how alive the project is; would only want this at, say z1-10 - as per Dave's e-mail: lots of visibility for you get different views on the same data, maybe with a More... link to featured images, or a gallery, or something - downloadable Fake SteveC mascot for your desktop which installs some spyware and stuff like that cheers Richard -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Front-page-design-and-SEO-tp22302099p22305733.html Sent from the OpenStreetMap - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
Richard Fairhurst wrote: Tom Hughes wrote: Screen size is of course irrelevant to browser window size, unless you're one of those weird web designers that seems to think everybody runs their browser full screen all the time... IMX it's a platform thing. Windows people genuinely do run their web browser, and most things, full screen. Hence the aberration that is MDI. Us Mac people, by contrast, usually have about 57 different non-full screen windows overlapping - that's why Apple came up with Expose to help us find them all. I dunno what Linux people do - whatever RMS has decreed is in the best interests of some weird notion of freedom, I guess. runs away very very fast That's a bit pot calling the kettle black though - back when I was using Macs, which admittedly was quite a long time ago, everything ran full screen all the time and you were forever flipping back and forth between applications. All long after Windows had given you the ability to have multiple things open alongside each other. Hell, even Windows 1 let you do that - it just could overlap the windows at all ;-) Tom -- Tom Hughes (t...@compton.nu) http://www.compton.nu/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
Tom Hughes wrote: Richard Fairhurst wrote: IMX it's a platform thing. Windows people genuinely do run their web browser, and most things, full screen. Hence the aberration that is MDI. Us Mac people, by contrast, usually have about 57 different non-full screen windows overlapping - that's why Apple came up with Expose to help us find them all. I dunno what Linux people do - whatever RMS has decreed is in the best interests of some weird notion of freedom, I guess. runs away very very fast That's a bit pot calling the kettle black though - back when I was using Macs, which admittedly was quite a long time ago Goodness me, it must have been - Macs have been like this since at least System 7 in 1991ish... Seriously, though, it does depend on the app. Right now I've got open TextEdit, Safari, TextMate, Cyberduck, Colloquy, Mail, Preview, and Terminal: the only ones I can imagine making any sense full-screen are possibly Mail and Terminal, and I don't think I've ever used either as such. OS X, and System 7/8/9 before it, makes much heavier use of drag-and-drop between apps than Windows has ever done, and users are expected to think that way. (The classic Finder didn't have copy and paste for files, for example; it was assumed you'd drag from one window to another. It's only in OS X as a borrowing of the Windows paradigm.) But Word and Excel borrow so much from Windows that they can make more sense full-screen, and the Adobe stuff is as ever a law unto itself - so many bloody floating palettes, one screen sometimes doesn't feel enough. (http://adobegripes.tumblr.com/ is brilliantly observed and puts all our parody blogs to shame.) And even Apple have been getting a bit too full-screen for my liking with some of the iLife apps. Where was I? cheers Richard ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
Richard Fairhurst wrote: Tom Hughes wrote: Richard Fairhurst wrote: IMX it's a platform thing. Windows people genuinely do run their web browser, and most things, full screen. Hence the aberration that is MDI. Us Mac people, by contrast, usually have about 57 different non-full screen windows overlapping - that's why Apple came up with Expose to help us find them all. I dunno what Linux people do - whatever RMS has decreed is in the best interests of some weird notion of freedom, I guess. runs away very very fast That's a bit pot calling the kettle black though - back when I was using Macs, which admittedly was quite a long time ago Goodness me, it must have been - Macs have been like this since at least System 7 in 1991ish... I did say it was quite a long time ago ;-) System 7 and 7.5 IIRC, between about 1990 and 1993. Tom -- Tom Hughes (t...@compton.nu) http://www.compton.nu/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 9:37 AM, Dave Stubbs osm.l...@randomjunk.co.uk wrote: I keep wanting to scream every time I see it say Mapnik.. as if three of the layers there aren't actually rendered using Mapnik anyway :-) I can't imagine what a newbie will think a Mapnik is. Quite. Can someone please come up with names for the two main styles that aren't just the technology that creates them? s/osmarender/ti...@home/ would be a start (osmarender is 'just' the technology currently used in generating the t...@h map), and as you say, the other three are all generated using mapnik (maybe postgis/mapnik for the gnu/linux tards amongst us?) so having mapnik is a bit weird, and I'm sure causes half the problems on the mapnik MLs where people are actually talking about the main OSM rendering and not the mapnik library itself. Suggestions on a postcard? Cheers, Andy ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
Richard Fairhurst wrote: Sent: 03 March 2009 10:05 AM To: talk@openstreetmap.org Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO SteveC wrote: I asked the CM designers for some quick hacks on what different front pages could look like which you can see on the wiki page below. Very pretty in a sort of let's-polish-the-CSS way, which isn't a bad thing at all. In a let's ask for the stars way, though, how about: - a little draggable I've found a problem icon - yeah yeah, OSB integration :) - something that says Hey! We're a fun community!; maybe two forthcoming events in tiny type? - some visualisation like Mikel's old activity tracker, showing where people have been editing recently - so you get a real sense of how alive the project is; would only want this at, say z1-10 - as per Dave's e-mail: lots of visibility for you get different views on the same data, maybe with a More... link to featured images, or a gallery, or something - downloadable Fake SteveC mascot for your desktop which installs some spyware and stuff like that These are all great star gazing ideas, well, maybe excluding the last ;-) Whatever happens, my view is that it's not the converted mapper that needs the focus of the front page. Most of us who are active with the project day to day will always be looking at the map but rarely do we need to use the front page or any of the other services. We probably have all those bookmarked anyway. Instead the front page should be speaking to everyone else, those we want to hook in (viewer or contributor). So, like Richard I don't like the idea of just tinkering with the css and layout. Better to be radical. Ideally a concerted effort for different people and web developers to come up with the look and feel and then compare the different versions. One is likely to win out, or perhaps more than one will be preferable, just like the German portal I am sure is probably used by many German speakers as their first point of call. What the experienced community should probably do is set the target message and focus ideas that should be incorporated. Richards's suggestions are a good start. I'd add stronger local community building to the list since we know that if you can build a local focus/interest group a lot more gets accomplished and everyone has fun doing so. Cheers Andy ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
Andy Allan wrote: Quite. Can someone please come up with names for the two main styles that aren't just the technology that creates them? Mapnik - Standard (or maybe 'Classic') Osmarender - Community cheers Richard -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Front-page-design-and-SEO-tp22302099p22306623.html Sent from the OpenStreetMap - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
Andy Allan wrote: On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 9:37 AM, Dave Stubbs osm.l...@randomjunk.co.uk wrote: I keep wanting to scream every time I see it say Mapnik.. as if three of the layers there aren't actually rendered using Mapnik anyway :-) I can't imagine what a newbie will think a Mapnik is. Quite. Can someone please come up with names for the two main styles that aren't just the technology that creates them? s/osmarender/ti...@home/ would be a start (osmarender is 'just' the technology currently used in generating the t...@h map) I hate to point this out, but ti...@home is also just the name of part of the technology used. Osmarender is the name of the rendering software, ti...@home is the name of the distributed rendering system. Tom -- Tom Hughes (t...@compton.nu) http://www.compton.nu/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 11:27 AM, Tom Hughes t...@compton.nu wrote: Andy Allan wrote: On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 9:37 AM, Dave Stubbs osm.l...@randomjunk.co.uk wrote: I keep wanting to scream every time I see it say Mapnik.. as if three of the layers there aren't actually rendered using Mapnik anyway :-) I can't imagine what a newbie will think a Mapnik is. Quite. Can someone please come up with names for the two main styles that aren't just the technology that creates them? s/osmarender/ti...@home/ would be a start (osmarender is 'just' the technology currently used in generating the t...@h map) I hate to point this out, but ti...@home is also just the name of part of the technology used. Osmarender is the name of the rendering software, ti...@home is the name of the distributed rendering system. I see it as the name of the project - the t...@h project produces the map, but the osmarender project leads to many different things, t...@h being only one of them. Unless, of course, the t...@h guys have another collective name for themselves? Cheers, Andy ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
Andy Allan wrote: On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 11:27 AM, Tom Hughes t...@compton.nu wrote: Osmarender is the name of the rendering software, ti...@home is the name of the distributed rendering system. I see it as the name of the project - the t...@h project produces the map, but the osmarender project leads to many different things, t...@h being only one of them. Unless, of course, the t...@h guys have another collective name for themselves? Well one key point of course is that I believe t...@h actually produces several different renderings, all using Osmarender and t...@h but using different stylesheets ;-) Tom -- Tom Hughes (t...@compton.nu) http://www.compton.nu/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO - layer names
On Tue, 3 Mar 2009 03:12:21 -0800 (PST), Richard Fairhurst rich...@systemed.net wrote: Andy Allan wrote: Quite. Can someone please come up with names for the two main styles that aren't just the technology that creates them? Mapnik - Standard (or maybe 'Classic') Osmarender - Community A good suggestion, although your choices are a bit loaded. It's not clear that it's the distributed rendering of the data that makes one more community than the other. The data is all community, as are the style sheets more or less. Without getting into a lengthy explanation, all that distinguishes the first two layers is the technology to render them and the cartographic style. The next two layers are for a transport mode and for mappers. So on the simple basis that one technology came before another, and it's all a matter of personal taste, and one style is the default: - Standard map - Classic map - Cycle map - Missing names (I can't help think this would be better as an overlay like maplint) Regards, Tom ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO - layer names
Tom Chance wrote: It's not clear that it's the distributed rendering of the data that makes one more community than the other. That's not quite what I was thinking of - it was more the cartographic style than the mechanics behind it. The Osmarender layer tends to prioritise more POIs, more differentiation among little details of OSM tagging, than the Mapnik one which is a very focused classic cartographical approach - more so than most webmaps, indeed, which is one of the reasons I like it so much. But certainly the Osmarender layer is a fuller depiction of the breadth of our community. So maybe Classic style Community style would be clearer than a bald Classic/Community. cheers Richard -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Front-page-design-and-SEO-tp22302099p22308134.html Sent from the OpenStreetMap - General mailing list archive at Nabble.com. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 11:35 AM, Tom Hughes t...@compton.nu wrote: Andy Allan wrote: On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 11:27 AM, Tom Hughes t...@compton.nu wrote: Osmarender is the name of the rendering software, ti...@home is the name of the distributed rendering system. I see it as the name of the project - the t...@h project produces the map, but the osmarender project leads to many different things, t...@h being only one of them. Unless, of course, the t...@h guys have another collective name for themselves? Well one key point of course is that I believe t...@h actually produces several different renderings, all using Osmarender and t...@h but using different stylesheets ;-) Gah! You've got a point. I guess Maplint is one of them. Looking at their layers code, they name the main one tile and describe it as default. http://trac.openstreetmap.org/browser/applications/rendering/tilesAtHome/layers.conf Ho-hum. Cheers, Andy ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
Richard Fairhurst wrote: IMX it's a platform thing. Windows people genuinely do run their web browser, and most things, full screen. Hence the aberration that is MDI. Us Mac people, by contrast, usually have about 57 different non-full screen windows overlapping - that's why Apple came up with Expose to help us find them all. I dunno what Linux people do - whatever RMS has decreed is in the best interests of some weird notion of freedom, I guess. runs away very very fast We have a screen full of terminal windows and access web servers with telnet :-P Jon ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 10:05 AM, Richard Fairhurst rich...@systemed.net wrote: SteveC wrote: I asked the CM designers for some quick hacks on what different front pages could look like which you can see on the wiki page below. Very pretty in a sort of let's-polish-the-CSS way, which isn't a bad thing at all. In a let's ask for the stars way, though, how about: - a little draggable I've found a problem icon - yeah yeah, OSB integration :) - something that says Hey! We're a fun community!; maybe two forthcoming events in tiny type? - some visualisation like Mikel's old activity tracker, showing where people have been editing recently - so you get a real sense of how alive the project is; would only want this at, say z1-10 - as per Dave's e-mail: lots of visibility for you get different views on the same data, maybe with a More... link to featured images, or a gallery, or something - downloadable Fake SteveC mascot for your desktop which installs some spyware and stuff like that +1 to all of those (does the plugin make ICHC update any faster?) there was an idea just to have some big textbox on the page saying tell us what's wrong with what you see that enters an OSB ticket for the region you're looking at. (preferably filtering-out entries telling you that the world looks incomplete) the 'drag problem-marker' idea sounds even better, since javascript is likely to be available for anyone using the slippy-map. ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
[OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
Something that's come up a few times in chatting to people is the front page design of the website and how it's been pretty static for a long time. That's pretty cool as nobody has felt the need to hack it away and it's sprouted some cool additions with time. But there are some things that could be nicer, it could be made more obvious that you could edit for example. One of the things I've heard multiple times from newbies is that they thought you had to be a hacker to be able to contribute... so maybe it could be a bit more welcoming to people. I asked the CM designers for some quick hacks on what different front pages could look like which you can see on the wiki page below. There are some very quick ideas there but it's not a full picture by a long way. The other thing that could be better is the search engine optimisation of the front page so that it shows up higher for some search terms like free maps and stuff. Anyway some thoughts are jotted down here: http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Front_Page There are a bunch of open questions like what design elements should stay, what should go, what colour schemes would be neat. Feel free to contribute and if it's useful we can build a design brief based on comments and ideas... then if it's useful to the community we can have them do some more design work to build some cool front page mockups. Best Steve ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 9:51 PM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: I asked the CM designers for some quick hacks on what different front pages could look like which you can see on the wiki page below. There are some very quick ideas there but it's not a full picture by a long way. To get some conversation going: I really like the Fp4.jpg[1] example on the URL you gave, Steve. It's important to make the map (and thus its data) the largest GUI element on the page. The buttons along the top draw my eye up there to see what's available. I also like the Shop link idea. After looking at all of the examples, Fp4.jpg seems to be the one that is the simplest and most eye-catching. [1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Image:Fp4.jpg ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page design and SEO
2009/3/3 Ian Dees ian.d...@gmail.com On Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 9:51 PM, SteveC st...@asklater.com wrote: I asked the CM designers for some quick hacks on what different front pages could look like which you can see on the wiki page below. There are some very quick ideas there but it's not a full picture by a long way. To get some conversation going: I really like the Fp4.jpg[1] example on the URL you gave, Steve. It's important to make the map (and thus its data) the largest GUI element on the page. The buttons along the top draw my eye up there to see what's available. I also like the Shop link idea. After looking at all of the examples, Fp4.jpg seems to be the one that is the simplest and most eye-catching. [1] http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Image:Fp4.jpg I must say, I like that one too... but... So many sites and applications these days seem to be going with all the options at the top/bottom and a full width content section, while at the same time most 4:3 screens are being replaced with 16:10 screens... Though at least most sites allow the content to be scrolled moving their menu bars out of view, this however, proboably isn't something that would be preferable with the OSM page... The end result being that with a layout like that on a widescreen display, you'll have browser title bar, menu bar, link bar, tab bar, random other tool bars, osm tab bar, small, but, wide, sliver of map, osm key bar, browser status bar and finally task bar... Obviously if you have a big screen with a decent vertical resolution, the sliver of map is somewhat larger and more useful, but, on smaller screens at least, and I'm thinking of screens with a resolution like 1280x800 here that are pretty common in laptops these days, that sliver isn't going to be that big... As such... I think the fp6/7 images would be probably better generally, and especially for smaller widescreen displays... That said, I guess there's no reason, beyond maintainability, why both layouts couldn't be made available, even if only selectable by logged in users... though a default that's good for everyone would still be needed :)... I think all the samples shown are an improvement on the existing layout in term of usability and from an aesthetics point of view, making things clearer and prettier at the same time :) d ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page
My own version with even less clutter: http://lhahne.wippiespace.com/osm/index-ol.html 2008/6/13 Juan Lucas Dominguez Rubio [EMAIL PROTECTED]: I confirm that openstreetmap.org is losing hits in favor of informationfreeway.org due to that left banner ;-) Cheers, Lucas De: [EMAIL PROTECTED] en nombre de [EMAIL PROTECTED] Enviado el: vie 13/06/2008 17:12 Para: OSM Openstreetmap Asunto: Re: [OSM-talk] Front page Would it be possible to make the whole of the left 'banner' collapsable, so that it would compress to a thin bar on the left of the screen? This is what google maps does Would this have a negative effect with Potlatch getting confused about screen size? Cheers, Simon ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk -- Lauri Hahne ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page
Careful with the sarcastic responses. You're violating the terms of the OSM license with that page, in my opinion. Cheers, Andy On Sat, Jun 14, 2008 at 12:47 PM, Lauri Hahne [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: My own version with even less clutter: http://lhahne.wippiespace.com/osm/index-ol.html 2008/6/13 Juan Lucas Dominguez Rubio [EMAIL PROTECTED]: I confirm that openstreetmap.org is losing hits in favor of informationfreeway.org due to that left banner ;-) Cheers, Lucas De: [EMAIL PROTECTED] en nombre de [EMAIL PROTECTED] Enviado el: vie 13/06/2008 17:12 Para: OSM Openstreetmap Asunto: Re: [OSM-talk] Front page Would it be possible to make the whole of the left 'banner' collapsable, so that it would compress to a thin bar on the left of the screen? This is what google maps does Would this have a negative effect with Potlatch getting confused about screen size? Cheers, Simon ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk -- Lauri Hahne ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page
Hi, Careful with the sarcastic responses. You're violating the terms of the OSM license with that page, in my opinion. Maybe if the page were hosted under http://all-maps-from-openstreetmap-and-licensed-cc-by-sa.org/ it would be ok ;-) Or he could also use the browser status bar to display attribution without wasting space. Bye Frederik -- Frederik Ramm ## eMail [EMAIL PROTECTED] ## N49°00'09 E008°23'33 ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
[OSM-talk] Front page
Would it be worth moving the introduction, links, wiki, shop, conference advert, and donation buttons from the front page to an about tab in the view/edit/export.. tab strip? The left-hand edge of the main page seems to be getting quite long, so the search box isn't visible without scrolling on some screens. Then, should export and map key be buttons on the map, since they modify the current map view rather than going to a different page? ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page
On Fri, 13 Jun 2008, OJ W wrote: Would it be worth moving the introduction, links, wiki, shop, conference advert, and donation buttons from the front page to an about tab in the view/edit/export.. tab strip? The left-hand edge of the main page seems to be getting quite long, so the search box isn't visible without scrolling on some screens. What about moving the search box? Maybe right under the OSM logo, or even on the tab-bar between User Diaries and log in/Welcome (although that may make the page too wide). - Steve xmpp:[EMAIL PROTECTED] sip:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.nexusuk.org/ Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page
In message [EMAIL PROTECTED] Steve Hill [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Fri, 13 Jun 2008, OJ W wrote: Would it be worth moving the introduction, links, wiki, shop, conference advert, and donation buttons from the front page to an about tab in the view/edit/export.. tab strip? The left-hand edge of the main page seems to be getting quite long, so the search box isn't visible without scrolling on some screens. What about moving the search box? Maybe right under the OSM logo, or even on the tab-bar between User Diaries and log in/Welcome (although that may make the page too wide). The tab bar is nowhere near deep enough for the search box, not to mention the fact that the tab bar is already getting a bit wide without adding anything more to it. This is mainly a problem for people that aren't logged in - the big box on the left that describes OSM vanishes if you are logged in. The conference announcement also doesn't help but that will gone again in a month. Tom -- Tom Hughes ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.compton.nu/ ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page
Would it be worth moving the introduction, links, wiki, shop,
conference advert, and donation buttons from the front page to an
about tab in the view/edit/export.. tab strip? The left-hand edge
of the main page seems to be getting quite long, so the search box
isn't visible without scrolling on some screens.
I also think that the current setup uses a bit too much space. Here is my
attempt to make things more efficient and more pleasing.
Compare the current osm layout with my simple tweaks:
http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/6303/snapshot20080613135303az8.png
What it does:
1) remove the ugly box around the OSM logo
2) make the logo less important by removing upper/lower padding around it.
3) Add some bullet points before menu items so they are recongnizable
as such. (Just stole some random ones on the net, we should obviously use
different ones)
4) Remove the examples under the search box, this declutters the page a lot.
So I think it's worth moving the examples to the linked wiki page.
All but 4) are a few tiny CSS tweaks.
--
Diff to the screen stylesheet:
50c50
padding: 10px;
---
padding: 0px 10px;
54d53
border: 1px solid #dd;
121a121,126
#left_menu a {
background-image:url('http://www.qplay.de/img/BulletPoint.gif');
background-repeat:no-repeat;
padding-left:20px;
}
173c178
top: 35px;
---
top: 25px;
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Re: [OSM-talk] Front page
At 01:57 PM 6/13/2008, spaetz wrote: Would it be worth moving the introduction, links, wiki, shop, conference advert, and donation buttons from the front page to an about tab in the view/edit/export.. tab strip? The left-hand edge of the main page seems to be getting quite long, so the search box isn't visible without scrolling on some screens. I also think that the current setup uses a bit too much space. Here is my attempt to make things more efficient and more pleasing. Compare the current osm layout with my simple tweaks: http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/6303/snapshot20080613135303az8.png Looks good. Maybe move the whole Search box to below the logo and the Map Key bullet point to the top of its list? That prioritises the main actual usage functions. I realise these are probably not CSS tweaks. Mike ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page
Would it be possible to make the whole of the left 'banner' collapsable, so that it would compress to a thin bar on the left of the screen? This is what google maps does Would this have a negative effect with Potlatch getting confused about screen size? Cheers, Simon ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
Re: [OSM-talk] Front page
I confirm that openstreetmap.org is losing hits in favor of informationfreeway.org due to that left banner ;-) Cheers, Lucas De: [EMAIL PROTECTED] en nombre de [EMAIL PROTECTED] Enviado el: vie 13/06/2008 17:12 Para: OSM Openstreetmap Asunto: Re: [OSM-talk] Front page Would it be possible to make the whole of the left 'banner' collapsable, so that it would compress to a thin bar on the left of the screen? This is what google maps does Would this have a negative effect with Potlatch getting confused about screen size? Cheers, Simon ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk ___ talk mailing list talk@openstreetmap.org http://lists.openstreetmap.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/talk
