I had to quit my trip form Oslo to Bergen already on day three - and I have to wait until August 2015 for a second try. I still got time to gain some experience in real time tracking - and mapping. Based on this experience I've made a new version of my live travel map: turban.no
This is a private project to learn new skills - where I care more about new standards and less about old browsers. I'm using CSS3 and HTML5 extensively, the the map will probably not show in Internet Explorer < 10, but it should work well on your tablet or smartphone.
My previous map was about 1 MB to load on my mobile, as I really took off mixing Leaflet, Highcharts, Ext JS, jQuery and Fancybox. I'm now left with only Leaflet and D3.js and only 72 kB gzipped JavaScript. It was a bit more work to create an elevation chart width D3.js, but it's very flexible when you get the grasp of it. I also used D3.js to create a lightbox gallery to show my Intagram photos, as it can easily replace jQuery for selectors and animations.
This is a single page application running in your browser with a CartoDB-backend. The only thing I've changed on my server is the .htaccess file to point all request to the same index.html file. Then I'm using the HTML5 History API to create nice looking URLs to different trips. I've also extended the application to support different users, but I have no plans to create a public web service.
The full application code is not available, but the different bits and pieces are and will. It's still work in progress. The next steps will be to improve the experience on touch screens, add a 3D display and maybe create a mobile app with PhoneGap.
I want to share some experiences I had when creating this map - and I would very much like your feedback!
When you visit the site, you can select between different trips. I'm creating new trips by simply adding new rows to a CartoDB-table. The track and images for each trip are fetched based on time attributes.
You can also link directly to a trip, like: http://turban.no/bjorn/oslo-gaastjern
You can mouseover or click the track to se place names and altitudes. To improve the performance, I'm only drawing the line and not the individual points. To find the nearest point to a mouse/tap position, I'm doing a nearest neighbour search.
Actually I'm drawing two track lines; the stippled line, and a thicker invisible line to make it easier to catch mouseover and click events, especially on touch devices. This is the line shown with less transparency:
The image above show the popup, with terrain type and a weather forecast for this specific location at the time I was there. The track interactions are also linked to the elevation chart:
If you mouseover the track, the same position will show on the elevation chart, and vice versa. Both the track and the chart show the live position with a pulsing marker. I'm also marking the overnight stays, as my SPOT device allows me to send custom messages. The elevation chart reads right to left, as this was the direction of my trip. The direction can be changed for each trip.
If you navigate around in the map, you'll see that the elevation chart is changing to reflect the view:
This is done using Crossfilter to quickly select the points within the map view, although my iPad gets a bit sluggish with instant updates while dragging.
Instagram photos are displayed on the map using the great Leaflet.markercluster plugin:
The photos are shown in a lightbox where you can click/tap through the photos in a cluster (no swipe support yet):
All elements are responsive and should adapt to different screen sizes. I've also made a build process with Grunt to concatenate and compress all the CSS and JavaScript into single files. LESS are used to get rid of all the browser prefixes in CSS. I also made a custom build of D3.js to only include the bits I used, reducing the size to one third.
Continuing the work when there are new trips coming up!
This is a private project to learn new skills - where I care more about new standards and less about old browsers. I'm using CSS3 and HTML5 extensively, the the map will probably not show in Internet Explorer < 10, but it should work well on your tablet or smartphone.
.@thematicmapping has upped the bar for travel maps! @LeafletJS, @cartoDB, @Highcharts. Oh my. Beautiful and useful | http://t.co/AAW6A0TinF
— Zev Ross (@zevross) July 31, 2014My previous map was about 1 MB to load on my mobile, as I really took off mixing Leaflet, Highcharts, Ext JS, jQuery and Fancybox. I'm now left with only Leaflet and D3.js and only 72 kB gzipped JavaScript. It was a bit more work to create an elevation chart width D3.js, but it's very flexible when you get the grasp of it. I also used D3.js to create a lightbox gallery to show my Intagram photos, as it can easily replace jQuery for selectors and animations.
This is a single page application running in your browser with a CartoDB-backend. The only thing I've changed on my server is the .htaccess file to point all request to the same index.html file. Then I'm using the HTML5 History API to create nice looking URLs to different trips. I've also extended the application to support different users, but I have no plans to create a public web service.
The full application code is not available, but the different bits and pieces are and will. It's still work in progress. The next steps will be to improve the experience on touch screens, add a 3D display and maybe create a mobile app with PhoneGap.
I want to share some experiences I had when creating this map - and I would very much like your feedback!
When you visit the site, you can select between different trips. I'm creating new trips by simply adding new rows to a CartoDB-table. The track and images for each trip are fetched based on time attributes.
You can also link directly to a trip, like: http://turban.no/bjorn/oslo-gaastjern
You can mouseover or click the track to se place names and altitudes. To improve the performance, I'm only drawing the line and not the individual points. To find the nearest point to a mouse/tap position, I'm doing a nearest neighbour search.
Actually I'm drawing two track lines; the stippled line, and a thicker invisible line to make it easier to catch mouseover and click events, especially on touch devices. This is the line shown with less transparency:
The image above show the popup, with terrain type and a weather forecast for this specific location at the time I was there. The track interactions are also linked to the elevation chart:
If you mouseover the track, the same position will show on the elevation chart, and vice versa. Both the track and the chart show the live position with a pulsing marker. I'm also marking the overnight stays, as my SPOT device allows me to send custom messages. The elevation chart reads right to left, as this was the direction of my trip. The direction can be changed for each trip.
If you navigate around in the map, you'll see that the elevation chart is changing to reflect the view:
This is done using Crossfilter to quickly select the points within the map view, although my iPad gets a bit sluggish with instant updates while dragging.
Instagram photos are displayed on the map using the great Leaflet.markercluster plugin:
The photos are shown in a lightbox where you can click/tap through the photos in a cluster (no swipe support yet):
All elements are responsive and should adapt to different screen sizes. I've also made a build process with Grunt to concatenate and compress all the CSS and JavaScript into single files. LESS are used to get rid of all the browser prefixes in CSS. I also made a custom build of D3.js to only include the bits I used, reducing the size to one third.
Continuing the work when there are new trips coming up!
2 comments:
sounds great, look forward to have a look at the source.
Very interesting & helpful instructions!
Hope to see the codes of site!
I am working on my little "10days around Iceland" site, still having trouble to run it...SOS :)
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