Finally, after 1 1/2 years of work, OpenStreetBrowser 2.0 is ready for use. Thanks to DerStefan who not only contributed some code but also helped by discussing stuff and motivation. Also a big 'Thank you!' to all Translators - OpenStreetBrowser is now available in ten languages (though support for some languages is still limited). There are some features in the queue for release, which didn't make into the current version, hopefully they will make it into version 2.1.

Wow, I'm really impressed, OpenStreetBrowser got its 10th translation - Hungarian! It's now available in English, German, French, Japanese, Ukrainian, Italian, Russian, Hungarian, Czech and Spanish (in order by completeness of translation).
My work is currently focusing on the release of the new version (available on dev.openstreetbrowser.org), which will launch as main page around time of the SOTM-EU-conference in Vienna, Austria in the middle of July.

This weekend I had a little code sprint, using the additional time during the holidays. I want to get ready to publish version 2.0 at the SOTM-EU in Vienna in July this year. You can already check it out on dev.openstreetbrowser.org. The first little improvement is the little box showing the newest entries on the blog. As the blog is more prominent now, I think I (we?) will post more often. Feel free to comment on the blog posts! It's always nice to have some feedback.

Although the database is already quite old, it dates back to September 12, 2010, at least a new version of the frontend is online. Most noteable is the toolbox system above the categories. I and derstefan invested quite some time to implement a new plugin-system I announced in the last post on this blog. There are some new translations available (Italian, Ukrainian and Japanese) and the Permalink handling has changed. With a right-click you can set markers on the map (which will be added to the permalink).

Lately I was thinking about a plugin system for OpenStreetBrowser. I thought, wouldn't it be nice to have a infrastructure to write plugins which can be disabled/enabled when needed? The plugins should talk with the main infrastructure via defined APIs and functions, but shouldn't need any changes in the main code (maybe some well-thought additional hooks and functions).

In preparation for the next major release of OpenStreetBrowser, which will allow users to create specialized maps themselves, I made a patch to mod_tile. Mod_tile is an extension for Apache which efficiently delivers map tiles and on demand (re-)renders them (or lets say it contacts renderd or tirex to request a re-renderding). Currently only the time stamp of the planet-file and the tile are compared, but with this patch it also compares the time stamp of the style definition.

Summary:
• Improvement of search field
• Implementation of dialogue for choosing the start screen
• Adding scale and live mouse position
• some little translation work

more details:

As I told I'm gonna present some features of the OpenStreetBrowser from time to time. It's also a good documentation for the project.

Routes of public transportation

Routes of public transportation are still not being displayed on the main Mapnik and OsmaRender renderings, although they are very important in my opinion. For me this was actually the start of the project, I had planned to make a nice map with public transportation routes. Now they are only an overlay, as they would clutter the main map too much.

This time I want to show you some features of the OpenStreetBrowser. One of the goals of my project is to display as many information as possible in a simple and understandable way. Sounds like the quadratur of the circle? Maybe it is :)

Housenumbers

I'm very happy, that I finally can publicly announce the project I was working on the last months. I already told you about the OpenStreetMap, this astonishing project with the goal of creating a free map (as in free speech and in free beer) of the world. The great thing about it ... you can take the data, use your imagination and think of better ways to visualize the data. And I used my imagination and creativity and created the OpenStreetBrowser.