july 2004 archives

Monday, July 12, 2004

From ESRI shape to SVG

Already, the tutorial on how to create SVG from an ESRI “ungenerate” file is one of the most popular pages on my website. Having played with the Geo::ShapeFile PERL module in the last few weeks, I have now updated the tutorial to include the conversion from ESRI shape to SVG. Go ahead and try it on your own GIS data.

Monday, July 05, 2004

Maporama redesigned

Just days after I learned of the Multimap redesign, Maporama announced the launch of a new version of its public website. Even the panning widget I just put up got a redesign, for the better!

Although the new Maporama website comes in 27 languages, there still appear interface elements in English or even French when I select Dutch. Maporama has come to realise maps are a cultural statement, hence the many options to change the cartographic style. Particularly useful are the map styles for PDA or WAP devices. Another gimmick is the ability to change the unit of measurement from metric to imperial for the scale bar. Finally, users can change the language of the map itself which is particularly useful in a country like Belgium, but users can also select the language for a map of Utrecht in the Netherlands when the interface language is English.

The redesign is certainly an improvement. Its main objective of the redesign to position itself as a truly international reference site for maps and itineraries shows that Maporama is aware of the cultural sentiments that maps convey. However, as the interface does not fully change upon selecting a language many users may find they are not taken seriously. When going for a multi-language website, make sure to do it right!

Sunday, July 04, 2004

SVGOpen 2005 in Enschede

Just got an email, informing me that it has been officially decided that next year's SVGopen will be held at the University of Twente in Enschede. This is yet another case of many things coming together just like I expressed in another recent post: my interest in SVG, one of my teachers at ITC, Barend Köbben, is on the paper review-committee, and also the Telematica Institute which I recently got to know through another project I am working on, has a part in it. How cool is that!

Friday, July 02, 2004

Ten questions? Ten points!

Having worked with Richard Rutter at Multimap.com, I still regularly check his weblog Clagnut. When I stopped by this morning, I read to my surprise that Richard has finally managed what I had always thought impossible: the Multimap.com public website has been redesigned using web standards! It must have been a real pain to go through the backend code and make all the automatically generated content come out as XHTML without breaking the templates of other clients. Great job there, mate. Congratulations to the Multimap team!

Richard does not only talk about the Multimap redesign on his weblog, but he's also the subject of the Web Standards Group latest feature in the Ten Questions series. By the way, check out those new map navigation widgets on the Multimap.com website!

Map navigation gallery

Different lines of thought are finally coming together. When I wrote an article about Dutch store locators last year, I came across many mapping interfaces, all of which looked different from each other. It was not just the visuals that varied, but also the layout and the behaviour of the tools and buttons to manipulate the map view. No consistency whatsoever.

Furtermore, reading through websites such as Design Not Found, Widgetopia, and last but not least 300imagesfrom1800sites made me want to start my own gallery of basis map navigation widgets. This gallery would be an inspiration for me when developing map interfaces myself. But then, it would also be great to show other people the diversity of these interfaces.

Cartography has not always been just about maps, but also about how to find your way around the map, especially when it comes to a collection of maps such as in an atlas. In some way, many mapping interfaces on the web are just that: one big atlas. Offline, cartographers provided map legends, index sheets, gazetteers, overview maps, grid lines and many more simple aides to inform their readers of the absolute and relative position of the map in front of them. Having focused mainly on how to publish maps on the web, cartography has to quickly earn its position among information architects, usability experts, and web designers to provide users of map interfaces with similar tools to make them aware of what they are looking at and how they can interact with the map view.

Go and browse around in the map navigation gallery. Currently, there's not too much there yet, but check back regularly to get the latest. I shall focus mainly on basic map navigation first: widgets for panning and zooming. There's certainly more to come!