[OSM-talk] New technology ...

[Lester Caine]

Kai Krueger wrote:
> I am not a fan of just changing things to "make them prettier" without
> adding functionality, or even less of "the website hasn't changed in X
> years, we need to change things to make it modern" either, but having
> multiple versions beyond what we already have is just likely not really
> feasible at the moment. There are imho more important things to fix or
> optimize.

I think that this is perhaps the crux of the problem. One gets very used to 
doing things a certain way, and when they change it gets very annoying when 
something does not now work. I can give a good example in Linux ... the way the 
scroll bars work on the side of a window has been changed by ONE of the style 
library teams. A little like double click no longer doing what you expect! 
Clicking on the scroll bar now works differently FOR SOME APPS. Fortunately it 
is possible to switch the new functionality off but why the **** was it allowed 
to be switched on by default in the first place :( Another area of the the same 
scroll bar is the stepper buttons top and bottom. Some people think they are 
pointless, but when one is working with directories with thousands of files in, 
being able to shuffle a little bit fixes a problem. Again, I can select a theme 
from users with a like preference and the buttons appear. I don't have to live 
with someone else's preferences.

Changing functionality, such as how double click works, needs to have a very 
good reason for doing it, but where buttons appear and what buttons appear is 
just a matter of personal taste! Currently on touch screen devices there is a 
conflict between using touch to zoom the map, and using touch to expand the 
function areas, or expand the note box to because it's too small. THIS 
functionality may be part of leaflet, so that is the development team we need to 
be interacting with, or maintain a port of that code which we can tailor to our 
requirements. I personally have no interest in 'rails', I work exclusively in 
PHP on production sites, so I don't want my hands tied because 'rails' has 
changed the way something works.

Just while I've been typing this it has come to mind that perhaps what I 
personally am looking for is a better organised cooperation between the teams 
that are building the tools we use rather than what appears on a single view of 
the data? Leaflet is supposed to be a 'library of mobile-friendly interactive 
maps', but it's that which is causing my problems with osrm, yours and the other 
options I'm playing with. I was probably missing the point that it actually has 
nothing to do 'rails-dev' ...

Everybody is off making a better 'widget' for their pet project and nobody is 
looking at the problem as a whole?

-- 
Lester Caine - G8HFL
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