[DUG] Advice on the TUMONZ SDK please

[Phil Middlemiss]

All good feedback - thanks. Some of the ideas are scheduled for when we 
do the page redesign, and others will go into the mix too.

Re the right click - there is a right click menu that you get on the 
HTML page which has nothing to do with the mapplet. What we are however 
planning to do is put forward and back buttons for recalling where 
you've viewed.

The zoom in/out slider IMHO is too space consuming since you can use the 
Goto list to jump back to the whole country, or the overview to draw a 
rectangle to zoom out to a specific area.

We have already had talks with various district councils about their 
data. It is a chaotic scene! Some of the councils are well organised and 
digitised - others seem like they are working out of shoe boxes!

Cheers,
Phil.

John Bird wrote:
> I have had a quick look at Google Maps, Zoomin, Tumonz Live, Google Earth,
> and Wises
>
> Some potted observations:
>
> -you don't do photos?
>
> -I think the best visual interfaces in order are Google Earth, Tumonz,
> Google Maps, Zoomin (all pretty good).  In the past I have crashed the Wises
> map search many times, even emailed them about it.  I think it was a .net
> error message (stifles a chuckle)
>
> -The different way you do panning is no problem if the screen says it
> somewhere - for instance a label "zoom modes" next to the 3 buttons, and/or
> hints on them saying eg "zoom mode"  "pan mode"  "ultra-zoom mode".  Maybe
> some users like to set a default pan mode...
>
> -How about you move the 2 not so important status bars (above and below the
> maps - "Home - Show your location...." and "terms of use.."  to a group of
> links to the right of the TUMONZ logo (empty space).  You could move the
> tool bar buttons above the search options, and hey presto you have a much
> bigger on screen map, and that's without hiding anything in unexpected
> places like IE7 does.  You could bury some of the terms of use and privacy
> stuff in a disapearing panel like the help and other layers...they are not
> needed in front of you all the time.
>
> -The upper right thumbnail window could have an option for whole country (as
> is) and an larger area view (like the others), eg a button to select
> either....would be cool - you could even have a zoomer for the thumbnail if
> you wanted to get fancy.
>
> -A zoom in/out ruler/slider would be useful, everyone else has it, would
> allow finer control over zoom out for instance.
>
> -Right Click does unexpected things.....I zoomed out, then on the right
> click menu I chose "Back" because I had zoomed too far and I went to Tumonz
> home page.....maybe a menu relevant to zooming and panning.  The right click
> menu tended to not disappear too...(that may be a Firefox issue as I
> realised afterwards it was a Firefox standard right click menu...)
>
> -Google Earth and Google maps are not as integrated as I would have
> thought.....cannot search for NZ places in my version, (got latest to make
> sure) I guess in time they are the ones to watch out for...Could find
> Scotsman Valley in Google maps, but not in Google Earth, which only had
> latitude and longitude to go by.  But these (lat/long) are not shown in any
> of the map programs....
>
>
> Anyone know what the technology behind Zoomin is?
>
> Hint - off the top of my head - a shrewd move might be to make a partial
> data sharing arrangement with Google Maps, might avoid them overtaking you
> in time, as they are bound to end up eventually getting agreements to source
> data with all the local authorities and relevant government departments in
> time.  I imagine such departments are likely to have no resistence to
> sharing their publicly available information with Google, as it is the
> logical way to publish it, similarly as they would give copies of records to
> libraries in the past.  You guys could be the provider of such.  Its not my
> field, so I am just totally guessing here....
>
> John
>
>
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>
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