[OpenLayers-Dev] mobile sprint prep

Benoit Quartier benoit.quartier at camptocamp.com
Tue Feb 8 05:28:59 EST 2011


Hi All,

At Camptocamp, we talked a lot, internally and with our customers, about
what would be expected from a mobile version of OpenLayers.
Let me share our thoughts and feel free to comment. and discuss them:

- Pan performance enhancement
In mobile devices, resources (network bandwidth, CPU, memory) are very
limited and pan performances is an important part of the user experience.

- Touch Screen Interface
Most mobile devices are touch enabled. There are different levels of touche
support, which are mostly vendor dependant.
Depending on the device OS/browser capabilities, different level of touch
support could be provided.
   1. Monotouch (these should work on all touch enable devices):
         1. Pan by sliding the finger on the screen
         2. Zoom In by double taping
         3. Zoom Out ?by triple taping? (triple taping seems bad, but what
else?)
   2. Multitouch Simple
         1. Zoom In by taping with two fingers
         2. Zoom Out by double clicking with two fingers
   3. Multitouch Gesture
         1. Pinch to zoom out and zoom in

(In most of the current Android phones, multitouch is not supported in the
browser)


- Use of Mobile Device Hardware
Access to the mobile device hardware is described by some w3c proposal
specifications.

   1. Localisation API: access the device position. (giving a way to easyliy
update it while the user is moving would be interesting)
   2. Orientation API: keep the north up (ref: Proposal for orientation API
(from magnetometer): http://dev.w3.org/geo/api/spec-source-orientation.html)


- Use of HTML5 offline storage capabilities

   1. Local storage of part of the map for offline use
   (2. Offline edition of features for later synchronisation (dependant on
the above point)


Camptocamp already did work on the pan performance enhancement, touch
navigation and basic use of the localisation API.
Our work is published on the osgeo trac:
http://trac.osgeo.org/openlayers/ticket/3000; it can hopefully serve as a
basis for further development.
@Jennie Fletcher: do you plan to publish your work on offline mode?
I also read on the list that someone did implement “gesture zoom” on Apple
devices; is there any plan to make this work public?

Benoît

2011/2/8 Cédric MOULLET <cedric.moullet at gmail.com>

> Hi,
> I forward an email that Jennie Fletcher, who will attend the mobile code
> sprint, tried to send to this list.
> Cédric
>
> *As this is my first mail I should probably introduce myself, I'm Jennie
> and I'm a Software Engineer for Edina and have been making use of OpenLayers
> for many years, along with MapFish, ExtJS etc.
>
> Recently I have been working on a mobile mapping application, adapting the
> HTML5 local browser caching in the TouchMapLite Framework (using PanoJS for
> animation) and was wondering if this functionality might be useful for
> OpenLayers.
>
> The ability to be able to access mapping offline is really important for
> some of the use cases we support, for example school field trips in areas
> where 3G connectivity is poor. Given the cost and unreliability of mobile
> networks I think offline access is a compelling feature to include. It also
> increases the kinds of device that the application can run on, for example,
> wifi devices such as iPod and non 3G iPad models.
>
> I have implemented examples using Web SQL Database (
> http://dev.w3.org/html5/webdatabase/) and Web Storage (
> http://dev.w3.org/html5/webstorage/).  There are advantages and
> disadvantages to both these.  My overall impression was that the Web SQL
> Database provided more flexibility and greater functionality and better
> mobile browser support (but is unsupported in ie and ff for example), while
> Web Storage was more restrictive but had better support in non-mobile
> browsers.
>
> For mobile application development we have decided to go with Web SQL
> Database, however the spec for this is no longer being maintained and it
> looks likely that the IndexedDB standard will take it's place in future
> versions, however there isn't currently any support for this in current
> browsers.
>
> I'll be coming to the code sprint in Lausanne and I'm keen to discuss where
> I might be able to help.
>
> Jennie Fletcher.
> *
>
> 2011/2/3 Cédric MOULLET <cedric.moullet at gmail.com>
>
> Hi,
>> I collected the requirements of various swiss OpenLayers users and I
>> created a "wish" feature list here:
>> http://trac.osgeo.org/openlayers/wiki/mobile.
>> Some aspects are directly related to OpenLayers and other are related more
>> to UI components. So, this will be probably necessary to also discuss the
>> usage of mobile UI libraries like Sencha Touch or JQuery Mobile.
>> All these points have not the same priority and I consider as mandatory
>> the points Map Navigation, Map Layers, Geolocate, Layer Selector,
>> Multilingual and Multiple coordinate system.
>> Swisstopo will deliver before the code sprint a mockup describing the
>> future mobile version of http://map.geo.admin.ch/ in order to give an
>> idea of what we would like to reach.
>> I'm happy to discuss these points and don't hesitate other points or your
>> point of view.
>> Best regards.
>> Cédric
>>
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 7:45 PM, Bob Basques <Bob.Basques at ci.stpaul.mn.us
>> > wrote:
>>
>>>  All,
>>>
>>>  I'm sure there are folks already thinking like this, but I just wanted
>>> to make sure that HTML5 and CSS3 are looked at hard for making things that
>>> will be compatible.  There are some interesting capabilities there already.
>>>  Lot's of new and potentially very interesting products to come out of all
>>> this.
>>>
>>>  bobb
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> >>> Tim Schaub <tschaub at opengeo.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> As you may already know a code sprint on mobile development will take
>>> place in Lausanne Switzerland from feb 21 to feb 25 [1].
>>>
>>> Lots of people have shown interest in mobile support in OpenLayers, and
>>> interesting discussions already occurred on the mailing lists [2].
>>>
>>> This email aims to encourage further discussions on the topic, to get
>>> ideas and directions for the code sprint. Everyone is invited to create
>>> and participate in discussions. This is a rather new topic so any idea,
>>> experience to share, or code to show, can benefit the code sprint and
>>> the OpenLayers project.
>>>
>>> Tickets and patches have recently been created [3]. These patches maybe
>>> a starting point for the sprint, so now is probably a good time to
>>> provide comments and feedback on them.
>>>
>>> A page has been created on the OpenLayers wiki [4]. This is where we'll
>>> be collecting information regarding the sprint content. Feel free to
>>> edit it, and add information you deem useful.
>>>
>>> We're looking forward to discussions.
>>>
>>> Thanks.
>>>
>>> [1] <http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Lausanne_Code_Sprint_2011>
>>> [2]
>>> <
>>> http://www.mail-archive.com/openlayers-dev@lists.osgeo.org/msg00494.html
>>> >
>>> [3] <http://trac.osgeo.org/openlayers/ticket/3000>
>>> [4] <http://trac.osgeo.org/openlayers/wiki/mobile>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Tim Schaub
>>> OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org
>>> Expert service straight from the developers.
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Dev mailing list
>>> Dev at lists.osgeo.org
>>> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/openlayers-dev
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Dev mailing list
>>> Dev at lists.osgeo.org
>>> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/openlayers-dev
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Political blog: http://cedricmoullet.blogspot.com/
>> Welcome to my world: http://www.cedricmoullet.com/
>> My Linked In profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/cedricmoullet
>> Twitter: http://twitter.com/cedricmoullet
>> Home sweet home:
>> http://map.geo.admin.ch/?crosshair=bowl&zoom=11&X=185241.24219&Y=561288.90625&bgOpacity=0&selectedNode=node_ch.swisstopo.fixpunkte-lage1
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> Political blog: http://cedricmoullet.blogspot.com/
> Welcome to my world: http://www.cedricmoullet.com/
> My Linked In profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/cedricmoullet
> Twitter: http://twitter.com/cedricmoullet
> Home sweet home:
> http://map.geo.admin.ch/?crosshair=bowl&zoom=11&X=185241.24219&Y=561288.90625&bgOpacity=0&selectedNode=node_ch.swisstopo.fixpunkte-lage1
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Dev mailing list
> Dev at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/openlayers-dev
>
>


-- 
Benoît Quartier

Camptocamp SA
PSE-A, Parc Scientifique EPFL
CH-1015 Lausanne

Tel: +41 21 619 10 40
Fax: +41 21 619 10 00
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