Bike Path block widths, and visual redesign

[James Nordgaard]

I'm interested in the status of the visual redesign that Reid mentioned in the thread on the main Cyclopath forum, the one with the subject:

Map of just bike paths?
Link:
http://groups.google.com/group/cyclopath-users/browse_thread/thread/92633cc334d8cefe/74fffd7e9ebed68b?lnk=gst&q=just+bike#74fffd7e9ebed68b

It is supposed to be due out this spring, and will be "truly elegant." Is it still coming? What will it entail?

I'm asking in regards to the basic request of the thread; that bike paths be more visible especially in the broad views. I came up with some bike path widths that accomplishes this (the draw_param table):

draw_class_code | zoom | width | label | label_size
-----------------+------+-------+-------+------------
              12 |   19 |    13 | t     |         13
              12 |   18 |    13 | t     |         13
              12 |   17 |    12 | t     |         12
              12 |   16 |    11 | t     |         11
              12 |   15 |    10 | t     |         10
              12 |   14 |     9 | t     |          9
              12 |   13 |     7 | t     |          7
              12 |   12 |     6 | t     |          6
              12 |   11 |     5 | t     |          5
              12 |   10 |     3 | t     |          3
              12 |    9 |     2 | t     |          2

If this has already been done, great!

I'm interested generally in what's currently in the works for the redesign so I don't end up doing things that are coming out soon.

Thanks,
Jim

[Mikhil Masli]

As far as I know, we are still stuck in the design phase. We are still figuring out a good coherent design that can convincingly solve most of our visualisation problems, including the one about prominence of relevant information (e.g. bike paths), usage of colours (there are just too many at certain zoom levels), and in general how to show the rich information that we have on the map in an understandable fashion.

I guess, once a design is ready, implementing it will entail ideas like the one you suggested.

In short, we are not implementing it right now.

Mikhil

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[Landon Bouma]

I really hate to say this... here..., but:

Given priorities, visual redesign is (unfortunately) low on most core developers' radars.

Also (more importantly?), the core team is composed of researchers, not visual designers -- meaning, even if we did want to design, should we be the ones doing it?

That said, I have a solution, though it's not something the core team should focus on:

Can we implement a "skin" feature? A way for users to define and share a set of parameters that define how the map is drawn/displayed.

We have a bug for storing user prefs, and this fits right in -- how does the user like the map to be displayed. You can skin your Gmail client, your MySpace page, your etc. etc., so why not how Cyclopath draws the map?

Anyway, just throwing it out there... if anyone wants to chomp at it, please do! I can't think of one single map interface online that lets you skin how the map is drawn...

(But let me please re-iterate that this is a "cool" feature and not necessarily inline with present goals for our core team -- we have so many other cool features to do.)

Jim, if you want to throw us a patch, that's cool; I'm glad you're looking into this issue. I wish there was a sandbox you could run so you could pass us a URL to see what you're describing -- it's much easier to respond to an email than it is to visualize code changes without seeing an example! (Trust me, the Cyclopath team has yelled at me for the same!) Anyway, you're awesome for contributing new ideas -- I hope you keep 'em coming. I just hope we can process them all and get 'em prioritized -- we have only so much time to do so much!

Sincerely,

Landon

[Reid Priedhorsky]

James Nordgaard wrote:
> I'm interested in the status of the visual redesign that Reid mentioned in
> the thread on the main Cyclopath forum, the one with the subject:
>
> Map of just bike paths?
> Link:
> http://groups.google.com/group/cyclopath-users/browse_thread/thread/92633cc334d8cefe/74fffd7e9ebed68b?lnk=gst&q=just+bike#74fffd7e9ebed68b
>
> It is supposed to be due out this spring, and will be "truly elegant." Is it
> still coming? What will it entail?

It's stalled at the moment - our designer graduated and moved on to a
"real job", so we're trying to find a new designer.

If you know anyone, let us know... the caveat is that we don't have any
money, so it's got to be pro bono. We can offer internship credit for
someone whose host institution does that sort of thing.

> I'm asking in regards to the basic request of the thread; that bike paths be
> more visible especially in the broad views. I came up with some bike path
> widths that accomplishes this (the draw_param table):

I'd really like to see some screen shots with these parameters in
action. Can you send some to this list, or attach them to a bug?

Reid

[James Nordgaard]

Thanks all!

Considering the multiple rapid responses, I'd say this is a hot button issue. I'm not faulting the team for not moving on this, I understand about priorities, manpower, and talents and the like. Sorry to hear you lost your designer.

I will send screen shots or other visuals if I come up with anything. The bike paths widths would be an easy change, but on reflection, I remember Hokan didn't want this unless there was a way to turn it off, so I think we should hold off on that.

My ideas are along the lines that Landon outlined; basically having advanced users create customized appearances ("skins"), which form a pulldown list that general users can try out.

My inspiration, which I had just tonight, was to have customizing controls right in the Map Key box, right next to each entry. There could be a master switch to turn the customizing controls on and off to remove the clutter.

I have yet to decide whether I want to dip into this or not. If I do, it will be with the understanding that my work would be in the category of a proposal, and may or not be accepted when I submit it for review. IOW, working on it will not guarantee that it'll be used.

Jim

P.S. A sandbox test server with a copy of the map would be useful, but I understand if there are not the time resources available to set one up.

[Reid Priedhorsky]

James Nordgaard wrote:
>
> My ideas are along the lines that Landon outlined; basically having advanced
> users create customized appearances ("skins"), which form a pulldown list
> that general users can try out.

Thinking about skinning more (due to the reasons outlined below), I'm
not convinced that exposing the skinning at the user level is right. My
intuition is that the number of users who would actually use the skins
would be tiny.

I think the right level is some kind of CSS-like skinning, and new CSS
files could be edited at the source code level or perhaps by end users
providing a CSS file.

Flex has new objects called "vectors" that are skinnable with CSS, I
think. I'd be very interested in a patch that would replace our custom
drawing code with something like this. (Note that this could be a tough
task.)

Anyway - the reason this is on my mind is that I spent several hours
today tinkering with map coloring. It's really cool looking. We'll have
some internal review to make sure I haven't missed anything, but I hope
to release a new look within a few days.

Reid

[James Nordgaard]

Perhaps your right. I sure would be interested in customizing, but I'm certainly not a typical user. Look forward to seeing your changes.

Jim

[Jordan]

I think the right level is some kind of CSS-like skinning, and new CSS files could be edited at the source code level or perhaps by end users providing a CSS file.

Flex has new objects called "vectors" that are skinnable with CSS, I think. I'd be very interested in a patch that would replace our custom drawing code with something like this. (Note that this could be a tough task.)

I think that CSS is the right way to go, but from the standpoint of someone who has done a lot of work with CSS, Flex 3 CSS isn't very powerful. There are a lot of limitations. One notable limitation is that only one class selector can be applied to an object. In XHTML we could do something like:

<byway class="major-road four-lanes" />

In Flex 3 we can only use one class name, for example:

<Byway className="major-road" />

and

<Byway className="major-road four-lanes" />

would produce unexpected behavior. (I'm not sure if "major-road", "four-lanes", or "major-road four-lanes" [one class selector] would be treated as the className).

Another thing to note is that CSS will only apply at the vector level. Although having a CSS style sheet that would determine both vector and raster styles would be awesome, I think that would be somewhat hard to do (though definitely not impossible).

IMO we should come back to this when we make the transition to Flex 4 (should be released within the next few months). Flex 4 will include a much improved CSS engine that will allow us to apply some really cool style customizations to Cyclopath.

Just some things to think about. I think that the changes that Reid is making to the visual design are cool and I'm looking forward to getting them pushed out to production.

Jordan