[OSM-talk] Move the Map

[wer-ist-roger]

Am Mittwoch 17 Juni 2009 schrieb Peter Childs:
> 2009/6/17 Eric Wolf <ebwolf at gmail.com>:
> > It's just the Brits trying to re-establish their imperial dominance over
> > the world.
> >
> > On Wed, Jun 17, 2009 at 12:07 PM, Shaun McDonald
> > <shaun at shaunmcdonald.me.uk>
> >
> > wrote:
> >> On 17 Jun 2009, at 18:17, Joe Richards wrote:
> >>
> >> One of the main annoyances that people tell me that they have with OSM
> >> is that whenever they visit the site, the map shows them just the UK.
> >>
> >> I checked it (from other random computers, not my laptop) when I was in
> >> Thailand and Australia and it always showed the UK.  Is the UK the
> >> default if IP resolution fails?
> >>
> >>
> >> It will default to the following if nothing else works (from url,
> >> cookie, user home location, session cookie, and GeoIP)
> >> http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=51.1&lon=-0.1&zoom=5
> >> The code of the algorithm is at
> >>
> >> http://trac.openstreetmap.org/browser/sites/rails_port/app/views/site/in
> >>dex.html.erb#L55 Shaun
>
> Maybe http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=0&lon=-0&zoom=2 would be more
> diplomatic, 
Yes it would be more diplomatic but then there would come one of those 
complainers and would ask "Why is Europe in the middle of the map? I want to 
have USA, Russia, Australia or what ever in the middle". And the discussion 
would start all over again.

And where is the problem? Google-Maps does the same thing. If it doesn't find 
any information about your where abouts then it jumps right to the USA.
I think a good look and feel for the homepage is a much more important issu 
than the startlocation. I heard many people by now that they didn't liked OSM 
because it was complicater and less features than google. For the regular user 
we should focus on usability. If the page has a good usability than we don't 
have to worry about the start location because people will find their way 
around.

Roger