[OSM-talk] Slippy map initial presentation

[David Earl]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: talk-bounces at openstreetmap.org
> [mailto:talk-bounces at openstreetmap.org]On Behalf Of Robert (Jamie) Munro
> Sent: 18 February 2007 12:56
> To: Richard Fairhurst; Talk Openstreetmap
> Subject: Re: [OSM-talk] Slippy map initial presentation
>
>
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> Richard Fairhurst wrote:
> > Mike Collinson wrote:
> >
> >> Would it be feasible to present instead of just one link to the
> >> slippy map  a series of links leading an initial continent view :
> >> Europe, Australia, Asia, North America South America?
> >
> > How good is IP->location mapping these days?
>
> Very good but not free. Or free as in beer, but possibly not allowed for
> our purposes (it says something like "This data is for assisting in IP
> routing, not to be used to target advertising etc."). We could try and
> build our own continental-level DB just on the first 8 bits of IP
> addresses. That might be good enough for our purposes. We could have a
> link that says "Not in Europe, choose your continent", and then cache
> that IP address for next time.
>
> > (or, failing that, browser language setting) to determine people's
> > preferred continent, rather than adding another layer of links?
>
> Browser language might work in some cases, but I'm not sure it's always
> set correctly. It is likely to not be set fully, for example it might
> say en_US for someone in the UK, which would be enough to point them at
> the wrong continent. Might be better than nothing, though.

The continent is helpful as a starting point but always too broad.

So in addition to that, why not have a button to save the start location and
zoom level in a cookie, as Google Maps does.

Also, when can we get the larger area and the 'Permalink' feature which
several of the test slippy maps on other people have pointed us to on their
own servers?

David