Moved!

GeoUX  has moved to it’s own domain and servers. All future posts will now be in www.geoux.in

 

Visit now!

(R)Evolution of the GIS Layer Manager

Experienced (and inexperienced, as well) GIS users have always been confronted with the Layer Manager or Table of Contents (ToC). Traditionally, the ToC has always been a tree structure where one navigates between the layer groups and the constituent layers. A typical ToC has folders, checkboxes to change layer visibility, legends and additional buttons to move the layers up/down, export, etc.

Traditional Layer Manager

Over the years the GIS interfaces have evolved and with the RIA technologies coming in, they have become more interactive, minimalistic and simple. One thing that has not changed much is the layer manager. Modern AJAX, Flex and Silverlight user interfaces brought in additional features like drag-drop to reorder layers, right-click context menus for additional options and sliders to change the opacity. But, it is still the tree structure!

The following illustration presents a slightly different approach aimed at making life easier for the non-GIS users:

New Layer Manager

Can it bring about a (r)evolution of the Layer Manager? Hope it does!

DART – the new JavaScript

Google has released an early preview of Dart, a programming language designed to fulfill some of JavaScript’s shortcomings.

DART is a class-based optionally typed programming language for building web applications. Dart’s design goals are:

• Create a structured yet flexible language for web programming
• Make Dart feel familiar and natural to programmers and thus easy to learn
• Ensure that Dart delivers high performance on all modern web browsers and environments ranging from small handheld devices to server-side execution

Dart code can be executed in two different ways: either on a native virtual machine or on top of a JavaScript engine by using a compiler that translates Dart code to JavaScript.

Details and code-snippets available at the Dart Website.

Big Brother Is Watching – It’s Google and it’s not 1984

We all know the amount of personal information about each one of us that Google has. In fact, Google knows more about you than you yourself know. Every word you type is tracked and indexed. Proof?

Open Gmail. Compose a new message with the words "attach" anywhere in the body and attempt to send it without attaching any file.

Big Brother in Action! You’ll get a message prompting you to attach a file. It says something like: "You wrote "are attached" in your message, but there are no files attached. Send Anyway?"

Scary!

Form Factor

It’s very easy to get your form wrong! It might seem a minor thing but you will end up irritating your users if you do not make the form easy to fill. Your form should guide your user automatically to the next logical field. It should not slap your user on the face for a simple mistake you make. Take the following form for example:

This requires that you enter a valid Phone number which is a mandatory field. The validation that is put in the phone number field checks for the United States format and throws an error if the format does not comply. No problem till now. But I have an Indian number and that starts the trouble!

In the form the country selector comes after the phone number so I need to first select the country and then go back and type in my phone number. It might not be a very big deal but at the end it breaks the user experience. It reprimands me for a mistake which I did not make but the designer of the form did not care to lay out the fields in a logical manner.

The ideal scenario for this for would be:

• Questions of the same category are grouped together – “Who am I?”, “Where I live and work?” And “How can I be contacted?”
• Questions are in a sequential manner so that the user can anticipate the next one
• The phone number can be validated based on the country as it has been already selected

Also note that the labels are aligned to the right. It is always easier to fill a form if the distance between the label and the field is minimal. The eyes need to work a little less in correlating.

In case you are displaying the information, then keep everything together aligned left.

Need to go and find the designer for whose mistake I was reprimanded! Till then…