Christoph, thank you for taking this up, it is a very good suggestion. I cannot contribute as much as I would like to yet but I believe that all your points are good and probably also come iin the right priority.
I would like to see some REST-oriented ideas come up, for example submitting WMS and WFS service capabilities Links or documents to Mapbender without having to log in and open a web administration interface. Mass-create accounts in the same way and enhance notifications, monitoring. I am pretty unsure what this would involve technical-wise and will unfortunately not be at the next sprint (at least I did not check yet). Good too see this happening. A side question: If something is broken on mapbender.telascience.org/current - should that also be reported using the general Mapbender ticket system? Regards, Arnulf. > We don't really have a roadmap. We talked about creating one a lot, but > we never came around to actually doing it. I think it's time we > should create a roadmap, follow it, and make it transparent to our > users. We should make retrospectives at least every three months to see > what we have accomplished. > > Please allow me to show you a roadmap that is guided by my impressions. > > (1) Improve visual appearance > > Mapbender looks just like it did five years ago. Users out there don't > know that the technology under the hood has improved tremendously in > these five years. It seems like Mapbender is a GIS antique shop from the > good old Web 1.0 days. I propose we improve the appearance by these steps > > (a) rely more on the jQuery library > > it has a lot of interesting plugins, like tablesorters. It also offers a > lot of unobtrusive effects. jQuery UI has a lot more of these plugins we > should use, for example use their tabs module instead of our own. By > this we remove code from Mapbender and make it leaner and easier to > maintain. > > (b) adopt the jQuery UI style conventions > > I've written about this in a previous mail. We should use their class > definitions and map them to our existing modules. People could create > themes with the jQuery UI theme roller. Again, this will also make > Mapbender easier to configure, and easier to maintain. > > (c) a new logo > > it's already in the make, but it should be finished soon. Could be used > in a nice default splash screen. > > (d) possibly implement the pseudo slippy map. The Mapbender map is > considered old-fashioned as well. It could be updated to a pseudo slippy > map, a proof of concept exists. The OpenLayers viewer for untiled WMS is > not spectacular either. > > > (2) Allow other map clients > > we should be able to allow other mapping clients, in order to allow > tiled maps as well. I see these options > > (a) map Mapbender API to Openlayers API. By this, the Mapbender and the > OL client could be made interchangable. However, the OpenLayers API is > huge and the question is where to stop. I assume this would be the hard > way. > > (b) use Mapstraction. The Mapstraction library comes with a code > template you have to fill with an adapter to your map client for each > API function. The set of functions is not so big, and could be finished > in reasonable amount of time. However, not all functionality is covered > (like adding map services). But we would also be able to display other > maps like Google or Yahoo without the OpenLayers overhead. Which could > be nice for smaller apps. > > > > I've omitted other important things like update script or installer, > basically because I think we should focus on marketing and show what > Mapbender is capable of, without hurting the eyes of potential users. > > I would recommend we create a new folder for modules that have been > refactored. By this, we would maintain the current status, and still be > free to make huge changes. I think the Mapbender core is quite stable > and will not be subject to severe changes. > > Storing the modules at another location will allow us to address the > modules we think most important, and be able to create a stunning new > application within the next three months. This new application should be > made public and linked to intensively, in order to attract attention to > the Mapbender project. > > > I propose we create the roadmap before the next dev sprint, so we can > focus on our top prioritiy and not get lost in discussion. We should not > plan too much and only address the topics we deem most important in > order to gain momentum and make good progress. > > Please contribute to this discussion. This is just my roadmap and maybe > the project would benefit more from other improvements. Let's talk about > it and vote before the dev sprint. > > Have a nice weekend > > Christoph > > -- > ---------------------------------- > > Aufwind durch Wissen! > > Qualifizierte OpenSource-Schulungen > bei der www.foss-academy.eu > > ---------------------------------- > > _______________________________________ > > W h e r e G r o u p GmbH & Co. KG > > Siemensstraße 8 > 53121 Bonn > Germany > > Christoph Baudson > Anwendungsentwickler > > Fon: +49 (0)228 / 90 90 38 - 15 > Fax: +49 (0)228 / 90 90 38 - 11 > [email protected] > www.wheregroup.com > Amtsgericht Bonn, HRA 6788 > _______________________________________ > > Komplementärin: > WhereGroup Verwaltungs GmbH > vertreten durch: > Olaf Knopp, Peter Stamm > _______________________________________ > > _______________________________________________ > Mapbender_dev mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/mapbender_dev > -- Arnulf Christl Exploring Space, Time and Mind http://arnulf.us/ _______________________________________________ Mapbender_dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/mapbender_dev
