Change Where am I to Where is this on left sidebar

[pnorman]

Related to #373

"Where am I?" is short for "Where am I looking at?" but prone to be interpreted as "Where am I located right now?"

This pull request changes it to "Where is this?" I considered "Where am I looking at?" but the at? is pushed onto the next line, consuming vertical sidebar space.

It does not make the side text any longer and should be a clearer description of what the feature does.

Current:

Where am I looking at?:

Where is this?:

[tomhughes]

I'm not sure that it's worth playing with this while we are still seeking a solution to the wider issues as described in #373.

[pnorman]

I'm not sure that it's worth playing with this while we are still seeking a solution to the wider issues as described in #373.

I agree that long term we need to figure out a UI that provides the features in a more sensible manner, but I view this as a small change with a small immediate gain with no downsides that I see while we figure that out.

[tomhughes]

I think I prefer the "Where am I looking at?" suggestion to "Where is this?" as the later is somewhat vague as to what the object of "this" is.

What do other people think?

[pnorman]

I also prefer "Where am I looking at", but is its length a concern?

[danstowell]

Just a 👍 from me - I had always assumed that "Where am I" meant "Move the map to my browser's geolocation", and I'm sure there must be others thinking the same way. I like "Where is this?", and the PR is clearly simple enough that it can be merged without touching any other work going on.

[simon04]

Done by merging #498 ("Where am I?").

[danstowell]

@simon04 #498 does not complete this. In my reading, the main issue discussed here is that "Where am I?" is unhelpful text and should be changed (in this PR, to "Where is this?"). #498 doesn't change the text, it keeps it as "Where am I?", though the redesign means that the line-length considerations are less relevant. I still would like to vote for the text to be changed as is done in this PR.

[simon04]

@danstowell: Sorry. Year, the text remained unchanged. +1 for "Where is this?".

[pnorman]

rebased

[gravitystorm]

Thanks for this - a personal bugbear of mine for a while! I think there might be even better ways of (concisely) describing what the feature does, but this is a clear improvement.

[tomhughes]

I still think it's no better - it's no clearer what the object of this is that what the object of I is really.

[danstowell]

I'm unreasonably excited about this. Thanks

[gravitystorm]

@tomhughes I think it's better, but not yet perfect. As far as I see it, the original text could be interpreted by a user as:

• Where am I (currently looking at)?
• Where am I (currently located)?

Both of these are solid interpretations, since we already have specific UI for both tasks. As you say, the 'this' in the new text is still open to interpretation, e.g.

• Where is this (map currently positioned)?
• Where is this (??? something else ???)?

I don't have a clear idea of what the second option could be, but if anyone has suggestions then that would be useful. But I like it since it's not so easily confused with the geolocation button.

I think a future improvement would be to move it out of the search field and make it more obviously associated with the map.