+1
http://bigfatfrog67.me
On 01/11/2015 16:53, Mark Goodge wrote:
On 01/11/2015 09:46, Stuart Reynolds wrote:
I don't like it for the simple reason that I think it will fail to
win over new Uk users. There are plenty of people who just want to
use default tiles to show a location on - sports pitch, scout hall,
whatever - and those people will inevitably go to Google. Sure, we
understand the differences between a map and data, but we need to
engage first and then draw them into making active improvements. And
this won't do that because it is so contrary to people's experience.
I agree. I think that meeting ordinary, non-map-geek (and
non-technical) users' expectations is important.
It used to be the case that both Google and Bing used local mapping
conventions for their colours. So, for example, in the UK, motorways
were blue, while primary routes were green, while in France toll
autoroutes were green and non-toll autoroutes were red. Those colours
may be arbitrary, but they were well-established. But both Google and
Bing decided to stop following local conventions and impose a single,
global style based on a US-style classification of roads.
That really doesn't work very well. In particular, it breaks really
badly for Google, because their classification system doesn't map onto
UK usage. You end up with stupidities such as slip roads at junctions
being coloured differently to the roads they serve, for example, and
an inability to distinguish between A roads and unclassified roads
based simply on colour (and width of a line really isn't good enough,
particularly at overview levels).
When Google made that change, therefore, it provided an excellent
opportunity to evangelise for OpenStreetMap, precisely because OSM
hadn't made the same mistake.
Now, I appreciate that OSM had the opposite problem, in that it
imposed a UK-style colour scheme on the rest of the world (due to the
lack of ability for local colour schemes). So something did need to be
done about that. But I am not at all convinced that the right thing
has been done about it.
To begin with, I find myself agreeing with the comments made by others
(possibly more intemperately, but no less valid for all that) that
creating a system to allow different countries to use different colour
schemes (like the old Google and Bing did) would have been a better
option than simply changing the colours. But, assuming that, for
whatever reason, that's impractical and the colours did need to be
changed, I still think that the new colours are a long way short of
ideal.
Specifically, I think that white is the wrong colour for anything
other than an urban street or a farm track. It's too indistinguishable
from the background and makes it hard to get a visual overview of the
local road network. I have a feeling that this choice may have been
driven by mappers who work primarily in urban areas, where white does
work. But for rural roads, it just plain doesn't.
At the other end of the scale, I think that the three shades of
red/orange used for motorways and A roads are too similar. While they
are different enough to be distinguishable when placed next to each
other, the colours shouldn't need the presence of a comparator to be
identifiable. If you see a section of road on its own with no
surrounding context (and, again, this is more of an issue for mid-zoom
levels in rural areas), you have to make a conscious effort to think
about the colour to be sure whether it's a trunk or non-trunk A road,
or a trunk road or a motorway.
That's bad UI. The colours should be different enough that if you see
a line of just one colour on an otherwise entirely featurless
background, it is immediately obvious (to someone who knows the
colours) what category of road it is. I'm not intrinsically wedded to
the idea that motorways must be blue, or that trunk roads must be
green. But I am certain that whatever colours are chosen should be
chosen with clarity in mind.
Mark
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