Changes to Digimap on 26 January

Yesterday, Tuesday 26 January 2010, some changes were made to Digimap. These are detailed as follows:

1. Classic removed from Ordnance Survey Collection.
As advertised on 5 October 2009 and 6 January 2010 this old facility has been removed and replaced by the new Roam facility. You can find a demonstration of Roam on the EDINA website: Roam demonstration

2. Historic Digimap "preview map sheet" button has been removed.
This function used out-of-date technology to render the original historical map sheets in the browser window. It was extremely slow and was dependent upon software installed on a machine which is being decommissioned. It is much quicker and more user-friendly to download the map sheet required and view it locally.

3. Marine Digimap Hydrospatial data updated.
The 2009 version of SeaZone's Hydrospatial data is now available through Hydrospatial Download. Late delivery of the data has meant a delay of the release from September 2009 to January 2010.

Digimap Classic Removal

On 26 January, the Digimap Classic mapping facility available in the OS Collection will be removed and will no longer be available for use. NOTE: ALL OTHER DIGIMAP FACILITIES WILL REMAIN AS THEY ARE.

Any maps present in your Classic Map Chest on 26 January will be lost. Please ensure that you print or save any maps that you require before 26 January. Please contact the EDINA Helpdesk (edina@ed.ac.uk) if you require any assistance in saving or printing maps from Classic.

The new Roam facility (released in October 2009) replaces Classic as the standard mapping facility in Digimap OS Collection. Key features of Roam include: 12 fixed scale map views, click-and-drag navigation or "slippy maps" and enhanced printing options enabling you to generate printable PDF maps in landscape or portrait and A4 or A3 size. Roam is a significant improvement on Classic, providing many enhanced futures and an easier to use, more intuitive user interface.

New facility, new name

As indicated in a previous post, EDINA is creating a new version of the existing Classic mapping facility.

A sneaky peek at the new interface under development....
Given that the new facility works in a very different way, we would like to give it a new name. We have a number of suggestions, and would like to know your views on them. To this end, we have posted a poll on this blog (look to the top right hand side of this window) for you to vote with.

There are a number of things we need to take into account in choosing a name. For example:

1. It needs to give the mapping facility an identity. When users contact our helpdesk asking for assistance with it, they need to be able to refer to it by name with confidence that we will know what they are referring to. Similarly, our helpdesk need to be confident that they understand which facility a user is talking about, and using an easily identifiable and catchy name for it is an easy means to that end.

2. It needs to be memorable - users need to know which facility they are using.

3. It needs to be unique, not used by any other mapping organisation for a mapping service or product.

Vote on the blog here, or if you would rather, send us an email with your ideas. Thanks for your help!

Forthcoming changes to Digimap

The current version of Digimap's Classic facility (available through the Ordnance Survey Collection) is currently undergoing both a facelift and some reconstruction work!

Later this year we will be introducing "slippy" maps (drag the map with your mouse to move it around) and some new ways of saving your maps and producing printed copies. The new facility will offer the same maps and the same functions as those currently available but will be easier and more intuitive to use. Everyday use of online mapping technology has grown dramatically since the current version of Classic was released. Users' familiarity with online mapping has increased and there are now common expectations of how map services online should work. The current re-engineering aims to accommodate these changes and build a service which meets those expectations.

Although this is still work in progress, below is a sneak preview of how the new version might look.

EDINA will operate both new and existing versions of this facility in parallel to ensure that a smooth transition is made between them. If you have teaching materials or help pages which are currently based on the existing version, there will be plenty of time to update them before the existing version of Classic is withdrawn.