[OSM-talk] New technology ...

[Tom MacWright]

Hey Lester,

I agree entirely - thus far we aren't focusing on the mobile version of the
site. It's never been very polished, and recent changes aren't focused on
improving it significantly.

As far as why, it's pretty simple - changes to the site are extremely
time-intensive because of its myriad uses and the necessity of having a
community process. That is, we've needed to focus on specific parts of the
site because, even if we agree that many things need to be done, we only
have enough designers & developers to implement one or two things a month.

I think there are two solid ways forward here:

First, which is admittedly less likely, is if anyone wants to adopt the
task of maintaining, testing, and improving the mobile site, and pushing
those changes through.

Second, which is more doable but more likely to get over-communicated, is
for someone to write a simple page pointing to good mobile options. For
instance, users of GPS units should easily find out about Garmin extracts,
smartphone users should easily find editors that work on their phone or
apps that use OpenStreetMap data.

Independent OSM-based tools do a better job at the very specific use-cases
people have on mobile - whereas the website focuses strongly on one use
case, editing, and has no smartphone-compatible editors.

(To tackle the inevitable points of argument that follow that: yes, there
are things that do this, but we need to do better. No, there's no committee
to decide and yes the best way to do it is to do it, even if it's very
low-tech.)

Tom


On Sun, Jul 21, 2013 at 11:26 AM, Lester Caine <lester at lsces.co.uk> wrote:

> With the arrival of a 'new' set of controls, and the discussion on front
> page, I feel that it IS necessary to open this discussion a little wider.
> Having been using the new interface on mobile devices I find it much less
> usable than the older set-up. But that is not to say that the old one was
> actually usable! There is a need for a different map interface that works
> better with mobile devices. Even the routing demos have mixed results on
> tablets and mobile phones. I've been working on my own 'front end' simply
> to provide one that I can tailor for the devices I am using. The old N900
> used to work well, but the newer devices are difficult to use 'on the go'.
> As an example, the old TomTom sat nav was easy to use while driving, but
> the current replacements I've tried to use with the Galaxy4 can be
> dangerous at times as they wander off doing their own thing, and you have
> to stop to get back to a state where you can continue following the route.
>
> It's obvious that the new map interface is not designed for mobile
> devices, so where should we discuss that development and how it would fit
> in with an improved front end. It's not just a matter of directing to 'a
> map' but more important is directing to safe options for those of us who
> ARE using the tools every day. The current options are both difficult to
> find, and have clear information on how safe they are when using them live!
> Disclaimers of accepting no responsibility may cover any legal liability,
> but essentially say 'here is a tool - but you should never use it!'
>
> And discussion on a more open platform would also be appreciated rather
> than on development platforms that we do not subscribe to because we use
> different development tools!
>
> --
> Lester Caine - G8HFL
> -----------------------------
> Contact - http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=**contact<http://lsces.co.uk/wiki/?page=contact>
> L.S.Caine Electronic Services - http://lsces.co.uk
> EnquirySolve - http://enquirysolve.com/
> Model Engineers Digital Workshop - http://medw.co.uk
> Rainbow Digital Media - http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.**uk<http://rainbowdigitalmedia.co.uk>
>
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