Thanks for the introduction to TileMill: http://mapbox.com/tilemill/. It looks really handy.
I had no idea how to make custom maps, so I learnt by doing. You should too.
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Re: I had no idea how to make custom maps, so I learnt by doing. You should too.
#12Cool stuff. A lot of value can be added by designing your own map, vs the typical dump in a Google map and drop some pins.
This inspires me to try out TileMill on one of my own projects.
Re: I had no idea how to make custom maps, so I learnt by doing. You should too.
#13I really liked the blog post. I really like the styling. It has a very strong brand. However, one thing on using your maps. I have an astigmatism, which makes tall narrow characters hard to read, especially at an angle. Here's my observations:
- Look at WEST 8TH ST. Zoom in as far as possible, then zoom out one click. That was the easiest for me to read because it was higher contrast and the letters naturally had more space in and around the letters.
- WASHINGTON SQ N is almost impossible for me to distinguish. All I could make out was WA...TON SO N at first. I couldn't tell that there was a Q in SQ and kept thinking it was an O.
- I really, really like the map styling.
Hopefully that helps you.
Re: I had no idea how to make custom maps, so I learnt by doing. You should too.
#14I really liked the blog post. I really like the styling. It has a very strong brand. However, one thing on using your maps. I have an astigmatism, which makes tall narrow characters hard to read, especially at an angle. Here's my observations: - Look at WEST 8TH ST. Zoom in as far as possible, then zoom out one click. That was the easiest for me to read because it was higher contrast and the letters naturally had mor…
Thanks for the feedback.
This is something I'd thought about actually, but not really covered in the post: Google has, I'm sure, done hours upon hours of research into map clarity. Sizes, colours, fonts, etc. By switching away from Google I'm losing all that- and any updates they publish.
So it's a double edged sword. The good news is that I can keep iterating- I'm not happy with a number of the zoom levels as they are right now (labels not repeating often enough, too small text, etc) and in time I intend to go back and fix those issues. So thanks for the detail- I'll definitely keep it in mind.
In shorter term good news: If you're on an iPhone >=4, the retina tiles are considerably more readable.
Re: I had no idea how to make custom maps, so I learnt by doing. You should too.
#15As someone who spent the better part of the weekend hacking up all of the Mapnik style XML files, it is great to see how someone gets things done more easily in TileMill.
I decided to go the mod_tile / Mapnik route so that I could generate tiles on the fly, world-wide. I have to agree that map styling is a huge time drain! Not only is it difficult for a map novice, such as myself, to figure out what all of the different Rules mean, but then the OCD takes over getting everything perfect. :)
Great write-up and really cool map style! I haven't even looked into customizing fonts yet. ;)
Re: I had no idea how to make custom maps, so I learnt by doing. You should too.
#16Hey Alastair, great post! Understanding OSM labels and so on can be pretty time consuming. You might like the mapdig library for CartoDB that lets you drill down into your spatial data to get a handle on what's what: http://vizzuality.github.com/mapdig/examples/osm_line.html (OSM london lines demo). Maybe next time :)
Re: I had no idea how to make custom maps, so I learnt by doing. You should too.
#17Great work, and a nice writeup. Do you have the cite OSM as the data source for your maps? I read their licensing terms over the weekend and I was under the impression that attribution was similar to Google Maps (ie text in the bottom right corner).
Re: I had no idea how to make custom maps, so I learnt by doing. You should too.
#18As someone who spent the better part of the weekend hacking up all of the Mapnik style XML files, it is great to see how someone gets things done more easily in TileMill. I decided to go the mod_tile / Mapnik route so that I could generate tiles on the fly, world-wide. I have to agree that map styling is a huge time drain! Not only is it difficult for a map novice, such as myself, to figure out what all of the differ…
TileMill has an export feature: You can design your map in TileMill, then export the style as Mapnik XML.
Re: I had no idea how to make custom maps, so I learnt by doing. You should too.
#19As someone who spent the better part of the weekend hacking up all of the Mapnik style XML files, it is great to see how someone gets things done more easily in TileMill. I decided to go the mod_tile / Mapnik route so that I could generate tiles on the fly, world-wide. I have to agree that map styling is a huge time drain! Not only is it difficult for a map novice, such as myself, to figure out what all of the differ…
TileMill has an export feature: You can design your map in TileMill, then export the style as Mapnik XML.
Thanks - yes, I initially tried this, but I believe the exported format is for mapnik2, whereas the mod_tile package I am using seems to be for mapnik 0.7. I didn't really know what I was doing at the time and figured that I would edit the XML files that already seemed to be working.
Re: I had no idea how to make custom maps, so I learnt by doing. You should too.
#20Your map styling looks really great, nice job!