This is my first real update that has substance. I’m excited. I haven’t spent nearly as much time as I’ve wanted to on the project the last couple weeks, but I’m finally getting everything off the ground. Yesterday I helped a friend with a project he was working on and I reached a mini enlightenment which is directly related to one of the major obstacles I was facing with my project. The only thing that should really be a problem now is time, and since I have two months left, time should not be a problem.
The image below is a really rough layout I will be using for the site. The colors, images, etc. will most definitely change; this is just to give an idea of the way things will be set up.
The layout is designed to be fairly straight forward. Links on the top, two toolbar boxes on the left, and a main box on the right.
ToolBar 1 will contain general map items – Controls and Layers. Toolbar 2’s content depends on the control / layer selected in Toolbar1.
The controls will be shown in a drop down box, with an add and help button below the list. If a control in the list does not exist in the map, the add button will be displayed. If a control does exist on the map, there will be an indication in the drop down list and if an existing control is clicked, the add button will change to an edit button. Once selected, the contents of ToolBar 2 will change to display configuration options for the individual control (configuration options will be different for each item, i.e. an overview map control will have different settings than a zoom control). There will also be configuration options such as which panel (if any) to add the control to, the control name, custom control styling / custom icon selection (if appropriate) / etc. Once configurated, the settings are saved.
A panel box is displayed below the controls. If any panels exist, they will be added to the select list. Panels can be added and deleted, and once a panel is selected for editing, the contents of Toolbar 2 will change to show panel specific configuration. Such options will include the location of the panel, size, etc. If the panel is location in the map, then a box will appear that is draggable and resizable. A list of controls that the panel contains will also be shown, users can delete / add controls (that have already been created) to the panel.
Layers are displayed below that, and work similar to controls. An input box is displayed and when a name is entered and added, Toolbar 2 will contain that layer’s properties. Once saved, the layer will be added to the layer list below the input box, and each layer listed is able to be rearranged by dragging and dropping. The first layer in the list is the base layer, and each layer has an edit and remove button attached to it.
The main box on the right contains a representation of the map. When a control (or panel) is added to the map, a draggable and resizable box will pop up, representing the size and location of the control inside the map. Map configuration options are displayed below the map, with properties such as width, height, name, and theme (an OLArchitect feature that will provide preset style configurations for the controls and other map elements). Once saved, the map will be stored and javascript will be generated that a user can copy and paste into their website and have a map.
This layout is not complete nor does it display all the features I plan on implementing, but it should provide a decent overview of how the map, controls, and layers will be configured.
——
Themes – I just checked out jQuery’s roll your own theme ( http://ui.jquery.com/themeroller ) and this is almost exactly what I envision implementing for OLArchitect (although, this is further down the line and not necessarily part of GSoC)
