[Openstreetmap-dev] How others do it

[Tom Carden]

> Saw the trac ticket #44 about gathering info on how other sites do it.
> Thought I would take a closer look at Maporama as it's my favourite
> non-slippy map interface.
>

Great - perhaps start a new page on the wiki, and tabulate your results?

For others, ticket #44 is here:
http://www.openstreetmap.org/trac/ticket/44

(I messed up my unordered list, but you get the idea.)

> One of the coolest features for a world maping site like maporama is the
> ability to customise the size of the map and the colouring of the data. So
> for instance if you live in the UK you can make the map have a UK feel and
> similarly in other countries. This would be a much better way of moving
> OSM
> forwards than trying to decide what colours the data should be. Simply let
> the colour swatches build on a country by country basis or by allowing
> users
> to define the colours, at least for the major items.
>

Hmm... let the users define the colours...  OpenStreetMap: the myspace of
maps? ;)

Seriously, I think custom colours is an interesting idea, but I think it
will be absolutely vital to get OpenStreetMap's default colour palette
looking respectable and professional.

We don't have to copy the competition on this one, TBH I think that a lot
of online maps look pretty ugly (OSM included, but we're working on it!).

Tom.