This removes the whereami functionality. #85
Conversation
find any clear use case for this in order to make the 'Where Am I' text under the search box any more understandable than the randomness it is currently. It seems to me like clutter both in code and design. Discuss as necessary, this is obviously not a straightforward change.
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i could have sworn there was a trac ticket requesting the introduction of that feature, but I can't find it... I do know that it was explicitly requested - maybe it was a mailing list post rather than a ticket. The target use case was for people who got a link to OSM from somewhere - email/irc/whatever - and clicked on it to find themselves zoomed right in to an unknown area and wanting to know where they were. That said I have to say that I pretty much never use it myself - if I find myself in that situation then I tend to just zoom out a bit to see where I am. Checking the logs for one of the three frontends I see that it was used 96 times yesterday, so maybe somewhere around 300 times overall. Removing any feature will, of course, be unpopular with some subset of our users ;-) |
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+1 to removing this. It's not a natural interaction and adds just more text to a content constraining sidebar. I think its a natural interaction to zoom out to see where you are on the map - I do the same in this situation. |
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One use of it is to check the reverse geocoding to see if it's returning a reasonable result. On 6 Sep 2012, at 16:21, tristen [email protected] wrote:
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It might be useful, but in its current incarnation, it's confusing. I always thought 'Where am I" meant "Where am I geographically right now?"
I'll bet very few people use it the way it is, and if there's an outcry-
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I think the functionality is useful as a way of putting the current view in context (when it's right) or highlighting place/boundary issues to fix (when it's wrong). Serge's suggestion of a button on the map itself could work (next to the permalink button?). I would also suggest not making the result appear in a huge side block, but something more streamlined (perhaps as on http://openstreetmap.by). |
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Maybe, then there's enough space for #57 … :-) |
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👍 on removing it. I too expected it would do HTML5 geolocation instead. For what it does, zooming out is the more natural thing to do. |
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+1 to that. Geolocation is the way to go. I'd also move this from link to a button with an icon underneath the zoom control on the map – quite a common convention nowadays. |
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+1 from me to removing the "Where am I" link. It's very confusing as "Where am I" brings geolocation functionality to mind. As for removing the server-side stuff - not so fast :) I'd say I like Bing Maps functionality which is similar to this "describe location" feature - Bing Maps shows a small label in the top left corner of the map which describes what is the current map view. It may be a nice way to use Nominatim and give more interactive feeling to the website. |
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The best way for this would be to show a breadcrumb I think, like on Bing Maps. |
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Bing got that from Multimap anyway, which I think was the first to do it... It's a pretty expensive thing to do though, both in terms of the browser having to make constant ajax calls to the site every time the map moves and in terms of the load it would put on the geocoder. |
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Sure, perhaps it would nice to make this a separate control on the map. I mean, something like "Describe Location" in the lower left corner near the scale control that would show a little tooltip when clicked (that disappears when you pan). At the moment results are shown in the sidebar which is always 95% empty, not very nice for usability. |
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Looks like we don't have consensus on this variation of this refactor, so closing here. |
I can't find any clear use case for this in order to make the
'Where Am I' text under the search box any more understandable
than the randomness it is currently. It isn't a common feature on other sites, doesn't
help with the editing experience afaik, and it seems to me like
clutter both in code and design.
Discuss as necessary, this is obviously not a straightforward change.