[openstreetmap-website] Rationalize multiple "locate me" type functions (#373)

pnorman notifications at github.com
Sun Jul 21 11:07:45 UTC 2013


![whereami](https://f.cloud.github.com/assets/1190866/831543/1dee09d0-f1f3-11e2-8f7b-aa853f0600db.png)
Currently we have 3 functions which serve to locate where the user is in some way, each which work differently and each which serve different purposes

1: "home", goes to the users home location and places a marker
2: "Show me where I am", arrow-type icon that uses geolocation to place a blue dot and uncertainty circle
3: "Where am I?", uses nominatim/geonames/etc to reverse geocode the current location.

It's important to remember that home != current location. 

Each has issues:

1. Requires the user to be logged in and home location set, and probably not the most useful on a mobile device where you'd be more interested in what's around you right now

2. Relies on geolocation, which can suck, and in my case puts an uncertainty so large it zooms me out to z9. If you're away from home and want to look at home, it may not do what you want

3. Somewhat misleadingly named, it's not where are you, it's where are you looking at. 

Each also has strengths

1. Precise. Doesn't require going through browser geolocation.

2. Good for mobile devices which will often have better geolocation than desktops and where you probably want a map of your surroundings more often

3. The only obvious way to reverse geocode. Useful for when you get a link to somewhere but don't know exactly where.

For what it's worth, I probably use 3 the most by **far**, followed by 1. I probably won't switch to 2 because as you can see in the screenshot, geolocation is crap for my desktop.

I don't have some wondrous design that fixes everything, but I figure listing the strengths and weaknesses of the three options is a place to start.


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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/issues/373
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