OpenStreetBrowser
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Browse the map at http://www.openstreetbrowser.org |
The OpenStreetBrowser is an application to 'browse' through the information in the displayed part of the map. The aim of the project is to provide a highly dynamic map that makes every mapped feature easily available to the user. It provides a worldwide coverage and a (mostly) uptodate database.
Similar to common Wikis and also the main page of http://www.openstreetmap.org the website shows a narrow menu on the left side, most of the page is used for the display of the map. In contrast to most Wikis the menu is not static, but rather the content of the map can be browsed in categories. For the map a special style has been developed (sorry guys, I neither like the default Mapnik nor Osmarender styles), and special overlays are displayed to support the current browsed categories. When you click on the map (left or right click is settable), you get a context menu with the option to select an object to show detailed information or to place a marker.
Full instructions are available.
Note: OpenStreetBrowser does not currently work with all internet browsers (in particular Internet Explorer fails). See further notes below.
Contents |
Features
- Places (Country, City, ...) are rendered with their name and their English translation (if it's available and differs from its local name)
- Route-Relations are being processed, especially for Public Transportation, where arrows are used to display the direction. In the details for a route the list of stops is displayed (if they have a correct role) (see also key:network).
- If available the abstract and a picture from the suiting article from Wikipedia is displayed ("wikipedia:language").
- Calculating route (via Cloudmade) from current geographical position to current object -> will be improved in version 2.1!
- Trams and Railways can have single or double tracks, which is rendered in high zoom levels.
- Housenumbers are rotated to be parallel to their street.
- Some Overlays generated from a Wiki-editable Stylesheet
- Public API
Check the ChangeLog for new features
For more information about the development have a look at blog.openstreetbrowser.org.
Status
- Current data version: no older than about 10 mins
- Available parts of the planet: worldwide
- Got a question? Check OpenStreetBrowser/FAQ first.
- Working with some browsers only (Firefox, ?(please test others and list)?)
About
People involved
Helping Hands:
- Lesewesen (Web design)
- Higa4 (Japanese translation)
- PierZen (French translation)
- Invisible (Ukrainian translation)
- Vanchester (Russian and Czech translation)
- Avila.gas (Spanish translation)
- Hunsly (Hungarian translation)
- Xuacu (Asturian translation)
How to help
Good at designing icons? We could need some help on the Stylesheet.
Help translating.
Report bugs.
You have a good idea? Suggest new features.
You have knowledge in PHP, JavaScript, CSS and/or HTML? Please contact one of us.
We need more hardware! Do you have a server (at university or somewhere else) for us?
Help to get the browser working with Internet Explorer.
Used software
- Mapnik
- osm2pgsql and Osmosis
- Cascadenik
- OpenLayers
- Ubuntu Linux
- PostgreSQL
- Apache (with mod_tile), PHP, ...
- Git (for software version management)
People write about the OpenStreetBrowser
- myself: http://plepe.at/2009/03/24/84/
- on OSMBonnBlog: english german
- on Mapperz: http://mapperz.blogspot.com/2009/03/openstreetbrowser-view-maps-metadata.html
- Karsten Kompakt: http://karsten.ei07.de/wordpress/2009/03/mehr-externe-seiten-bei-osm/
Download Source
The source of OpenStreetBrowser is available in a neat Gitorious-Repository on http://gitorious.org/openstreetbrowser. There's a master-branch which contains the "stable" version, the version-branches containing the different version. There might be other branches too. If you have problems to get it to run, please tell me, I'll try to improve the documentation. Have fun!
