Patrick O'Brian Mapping Project GUI Changes
March 28, 2009, 12:41 am
I have become slightly stalled on the Surgeon's Mate. The course across the Atlantic is not completely obvious and I struggling to get past some contradictory evidence. I will get there eventually.
So as a distraction I have spent a bit of time improving some things that have annoyed me.
- Moved all the map data into a MySQL database. I should have done this a long time ago.
- Exposing my map data as json objects rather than XML (thanks to my new DB) means faster page load times.
- I have added a Toggle button to the toolbar which hides/shows the header for the map page. More map and less superfluous GUI is good.
- Previously when clicking on thumbnail images in infoWindows opened a separate page, this has been changed to a javascript lightbox to highlight the larger image (and no page reloads)
- I have created a series of static pages based on each map note. This exposes all the content on the site to search engines and also provides a low bandwidth/no javascript experience for users.
Hope you like the changes, I should really get back to Surgeon's Mate (and play less Broken Picture Telephone)
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