[OSM-talk] Welcome box on the new map page

[Lester Caine]

Paul Norman wrote:
>> I know that there is a lot of support for NOT providing services
> I'd say there's a wide desire for offering services like OWL and routing
> on OSM.org. Of course, these take development hours, time, and money, so
> a wide desire doesn't translate into actually adding the services.
>
>> >but until a suitable replacement can be created for the many thousands of
> us
>> >using embeded maps, maintaining usable operation is important. The
>> >current changes are not compatible with using the embed function so THAT
>> >should have beendepricated first and time provided for us to make
>> >changes to existing usage!
> I looked at the embed HTML generated, and I don't see what doesn't work.
> All the links are valid, and the page that you land (the front page)
> seems more likely to covert the visitor to a mapper, because it now
> gives some text to explain where they've ended up.

Some how I don't think we are looking at the new front page the same way ...

It's the very fact that it IS designed to make 'convert to mapper' the REQUIRED 
result that is the problem. What is preferable is a half way house that provides 
the information ON THE ONE PAGE that can be used as the 'Larger View' from the 
embeded versions. I don't see why simply restoring the old front page for that 
purpose should be any additional work? The map used on that page can be the new 
view and switches to the mapping front end when someone has time to follow that 
path. I can see a compromise that gives an information panel to the right in 
place of the welcome box but supporting THAT needs work, where a simple 
'old.osm' url would be a lot less work?

It sounds as if I'm going to have to create my own site to support this ... 
While I can see that on the whole the new front end has a number of nice 
features it IS too targeted at a different goal, and as an information page for 
OSM it fails miserably so something better is needed! The wiki front page is a 
bit of a mess, but is much more useful now, but the fundamental problem of 
taking new mappers to LOCAL support is even less well supported now? It seems 
that everybody has to work in English if they want to use OSM :(

And I still need to find out where the 'export' is intended to go? Is that were 
we should be able to create embeded frames or somewhere else? Share does not 
provide the material and hacking the code manually is not something novice users 
can do easily. In the past my clients could play with this, but at present there 
is nothing suitable.

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
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