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

Maarten Deen mdeen at xs4all.nl
Sat Nov 30 20:30:13 UTC 2013


On 2013-11-30 20:24, SomeoneElse wrote:

> I understand the reticence on behalf of many people to criticise
> suggestions from the (not being directly paid to do so) developers of
> the osm.org site.  As a software developer myself, being asked "how am
> I supposed to use _that_?" and being told "that's rubbish, please
> start again!" aren't nice, but sometimes are necessary.  I'm also
> aware of the alleged Henry Ford quote "If I had asked people what they
> wanted, they would have said faster horses" - people are naturally
> resistant to change, failing to appreciate changes that can allow
> better things to happen in the future.  However in this case I think
> the new design has genuinely got it wrong and needs a serious rethink
> - what should be the site design that casual visitors see?  What about
> regular mappers who just want to get at the "boring numbers"?

What comes to my mind is "If it ain't broken, don't fix it".
I fail to see the rationale behind changing the looks of the osm map 
page again.
What was wrong with it that needed to be fixed with this update?
It all seems so "Windows 8"ish to me (and while taste is personal, I do 
want to say that it is not a look that I like, and I hate that so many 
website do seem to adopt this style, like Microsoft is some kind of 
style guru).

I hadn't even noticed that the pages for individual nodes, ways and 
relations had changed. I immediately see one big problem with the "boxes 
in a small left column approach": what when there is a lot of data in 
the value? Have a look at 
<http://www.openstreetmap.org/way/9133666/history> and notice how the 
tiger:source and tiger:tlid values get obscured by the map.

Maarten



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