Maps and Graphics library Options

[frax]

Phew -- finally done! I have been working day & night with this the past days.

UNEP/GRID-Arendal Maps & Graphics Library



This represents the most important thematic maps & graphics that we, at my office, have prepared the last 15 years -- with a strong emphasis on the last 5 years. Including some Interactive maps.

A work in progess, we are constantly feeding more things in the db (both new and old projects). We approximate it to be around 2000 when we are done, but it is of course constantly growing. Some of the big/high-profile ones are not in there yet...

We are looking into setting up some payment gateway for the downloads of high-res vector graphics.

So what did yours truly do? I did all the programming, I did a slice of the graphics in the db (maybe 10-15% but I only started with doing graphics more regularily recently), and I did all the interactive maps (ArcIMS servers).

I work for UNEP/GRID-Arendal, an office in Norway in the UN Environment Progamme. We specialize in environmental information in the UNEP Division of Early Warning and Assessment, and we work with assessments and publications - such as World Resources Report, GEO, IPCC, Millennium Ecosystem Assessment.

Note that the design has only been partially mac-proffed, pm me if anything looks weird - please! (with screenshot and version numbers)

Oh - and you can spot the box/density map on the front page, the one I have been asking about feedback on, on this forum!

For geeks, spot our 404 Page Not Found page and guess where this screen shot is from: Internal Server Error page

[Martin Gamache]

We are looking into setting up some payment gateway for the downloads of high-res vector graphics.

Why?


Shouldn't the UN just give it away...taxpayers have already paid once for it right?

[frax]

don't ask me. It will be some minor handling fee, supporting the library and future development. And the raster versions (quite high-res in some cases) will always be free.

[frax]

on the site: any comments, critique etc... ?

[JimBlakeslee]

Truly an outstanding website. I appreciate the web standards compliant markup. While I generally cringe at javascript, the graphics which arrive when you mouseover a map/graphic name are well chosen and well implemented.

The graphics themselves are very impressive, whoever did them.

I think designers are fairly limited with what they can accomplish in terms of usability with ArcIMS. In terms of other ArcIMS implementations I have seen, yours is one of the better ones. However, trying to use Globalis was throwing popup errors ("uncaught error") at initialization for me in Firefox 1.5.

Bottom line for me: Powerful search tools, but easy to navigate. Complex content, but well preseneted. Interactive content, but standards compliant. Really, really nice work.

[DaveB]

Overall design looks good. It would take quite some time to go through and critique it all. There is a lot of content there! (not that there's anything wrong with that ).

I took a quick look at Globalis. Maybe I missed it, but it would be nice to be able to turn off the hillshading/terrain. It seems it turns itself off when you zoom in far enough, but zoomed out it makes it harder to read the thematic data.

The temperature themes seem to be centigrade/celsius, but it doesn't mention that anywhere that I can find. For us rugged individualist Americans clinging to our old measuring system inherited from the British (and German? - what was Fahrenheit anyway?) it might be nice to at least be clear on that (even better if there was a translation into degrees F (unless that is against policy).

City names don't seem to show when zoomed in and map is small.

Might be good to have some definitions. For example, what do the different landcover types mean? The map classifies a lot of southern California as savannah, substantially reducing the amount of desert.

Map of internet users has lighter color for higher percentage. That seems backwards to me.

I realize you probably don't have control over a lot of this, but those were a few things that kind of jumped out at me.

Overall impression is very favorable though.

[frax]

thanks for the feedback. Jim, as you might have seen - the interactive maps are not very standards compliant (yet), and that is on the to-do list.

Dave - definately some stuff to put on the to-do list and to look into, thanks. The data and the coloring is what an external partner (Norwegian UN association) is in charge of, but I'll forward the comments to them. Unfortunately it is not possible to toggle hillshading easily, it is pre-rendered in the image files.