SteveW
Advanced Member
Posts:662
 | | 11 May 2005 05:02 PM | | A new way of finding out about UK archaeology is being developed. We're developing it with the help of Gordon (the Historian) and it will be available soon.
It's location based, so you can find out about archaeology in your area. More importantly, you will be able to add to the collection to let others know about your local archaeology.
The new resource is not tied to any government initiative, it's funded by revenue collected from Online Archaeology. It's a place where you can find out about the archaeology around us, and a place where you can let others know about archaeology in your area.
Steve White | | | |
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SteveW
Advanced Member
Posts:662
| | 12 Mar 2005 03:29 PM | | | I've just updated some of the interface and made things a bit tighter. If you browse to a Category an select View all you'll now see a small icon appear at the bottom of the map. If you click it you'll see Options appear on the map for other Categories in that County. Tested in IE6 and FF 1.0.7.
There'll be more Options appearing in that area soon, depending on what values are passed to the map. I plan to make search interface there so that people can search directly on the map page. | | | |
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SteveW
Advanced Member
Posts:662
| | 12 Mar 2005 03:35 PM | | | I've also been given a licence by EH to use all of their Thesauri. This is part of making the application FISH enabled. I've got all of the EH Thesauri matrix in my local DB and am starting to build admin pages so I can link my local categories to Terms. Then I'll need to code an XML dump on the fly of each category and we'll be FISH enabled as far as exports go. Importing FISH data will probably take a little longer. I've also got to come up with a better way to handle multiple category data on one map - the obvious method is to assign a different icon to each category, but the markers still need to be numbered. I've just got a copy of Fireworks so I think it's head-down time and just get on with it. | | | |
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the_historian
Veteran Member
Posts:1825
| | 11 May 2005 06:21 PM | | Steve,
I'm proud to have been asked to take part in the project, and am looking forward tremendously to seeing it grow and develop.
Regards,Gordon
http://freewebs.com/thehistoryvault/ | | | |
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SteveW
Advanced Member
Posts:662
| | 12 Jun 2005 09:58 AM | | | The BAJR Curator data is now live on the resource. There are direct links to all BAJR data on the home page.
Next University Depts.... | | | |
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SteveW
Advanced Member
Posts:662
| | 11 Jul 2005 12:13 PM | | | Does anyone else want to help Gordon and myself test this new resource? If you want to help us test what we have and offer some more ideas, please reply to this thread and I'll contact you with a link.
thanks,
Steve White | | | |
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SteveW
Advanced Member
Posts:662
| | 11 Aug 2005 01:00 PM | | | We're not far off releasing this now, but it would be very helpful if we get more testers. So far we've tested it on IE6, FF 1.0.7 and FF 1.5. Anyone going to voluntee a different browser so we can correct problems before we are live?
Steve White | | | |
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Baldlygo
New Member
Posts:60
| | 11 Sep 2005 11:52 AM | | | Send me the link Steve and I can check Opera, Netscape, Konquerer and older IEs | | | |
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SteveW
Advanced Member
Posts:662
| | 11 Sep 2005 12:01 PM | | | Thanks Baldlygo -
I think older IEs are ruled out because it uses Google Map API and that is not supported by default - not sure about the others though. However, it would be useful to know what happens with these browsers - I've put a Google Map API function on the Map page to sniff out older browsers and return an alert, so it would be good to know that that works OK.
I've sent you the link and thanks for your help. | | | |
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Baldlygo
New Member
Posts:60
| | 11 Sep 2005 12:50 PM | | | Given it a whorl but it seems that I will not see any Googlemap at the moment anyway.
Here are my test results:
Windows 98se
Firefox 1.0.7 (appears ok - shows googlemap error message on right - however pointer does not change when hovering over left category titles)
Opera 7.2 (appears ok - shows googlemap error message on right)
MyIE2 0.8.220 (appears ok - shows googlemap error message on right)
Mandrake Linux
Mozilla 1.4 (renders as above)
Mandrake Linux
Konqueror 3.1.4 (no info in right box)
Galeon 1.3.8 (no info in right box)
Netscape 4.7 (well out of date!!)
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SteveW
Advanced Member
Posts:662
| | 11 Sep 2005 12:55 PM | | | FF 1.0.7
- What does this mean - "shows googlemap error message on right"? Can you give me the error so I can investigate?
- I'll change the pointer, but if you click the + next to the Categories, and click on one where the ItemCount > 0 do you see details in the right hand pane?
- does the search work?
Did you ever see an alert msg saying your browser is not supported?
Steve White | | | |
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SteveW
Advanced Member
Posts:662
| | 11 Sep 2005 01:22 PM | | | I just found this from Google:
Google Local currently supports the following web browsers:
IE 6.0+
Firefox 0.8+
Safari 1.2.4+
Netscape 7.1+
Mozilla 1.4+
Opera 8.02+
Steve White | | | |
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AntArch
New Member
Posts:19
| | 11 Sep 2005 02:14 PM | | | Hi all,
I assume this is using the Google API which people can then use to put on virtual pins (in lat/long) for heritage resources within their area (for example: http://www.geography.dur.ac.uk/dnnsandbox/modexamples/Mapping/tabid/991/Default.aspx). In general I think this is an excellent idea, however, there may be some issues associated with a resource such as this which people may consider problematic:
1. Its relationship to an SMR (one would not like to see this supplant more formal mechanisms of data curation)
2. How such a resource is used. Without wanting to bring up the flame wars of BritArch a resource such as this can be mis-used (but then again what resource can't) by unscrupulous treasure hunters.
The basic concern is that Online Archaeology has proven to be an excellent resource that has integrated professional (curatorial, academic and contractual) archaeologists, lay-people and others by it's open approach and this may ruffle some feathers.
I don't mean to be negative I just don't want to see good work undone
Ant | | | |
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the_historian
Veteran Member
Posts:1825
| | 11 Sep 2005 02:19 PM | | | Again without wishing to start flame wars, most of the British NMRs are now online. I can't see the difference between 'treasure-hunters' misusing the 'official' source, and misusing this one; if they're going to do it, they're going to do it anyway!
Besides which, there is no national British NMR; the four constituent countries all have their own ones,and I think this initiative by Steve goes some way to filling a gap.
Regards,Gordon
http://freewebs.com/thehistoryvault/ | | | |
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AntArch
New Member
Posts:19
| | 11 Sep 2005 02:24 PM | | | Agree, agree, agree. I've no issue with this. Just trying to think around the ramifications. The most important point I raised is the first one and the maintenance of good will.
A | | | |
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SteveW
Advanced Member
Posts:662
| | 11 Sep 2005 02:29 PM | | | You bring up some valid points AntArch.
The new resource is going to be using the new FISH data heritage standards as outlined by MIDAS and FISH, so I see nothing wrong there. Secondly, any added resources are already in the public domain and are as such already available for treasure hunters.
There's always a problem with putting archaeological information online, but in my opinion the positive aspects far out-weigh the negative. This resource is supposed to encourage people into archaeology by allowing them to list archaeology in their area. All additions are moderated, all comments are moderated. I had thought about setting it up as member-only, but that to me defeats the point.
The resource is also an experiment into how geo-referenced data can be done on the cheap without hugely expensive and complicated GIS packages. We'll be adding more Categories such as Contracting Units and Societies to show that it can be used as a heritage resource.
I look forward to continuing this discussion....
Steve White | | | |
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the_historian
Veteran Member
Posts:1825
| | 11 Sep 2005 02:30 PM | | | And it's a perfectly valid one A. I don't believe there will be a problem with goodwill; we have some very astute members here.
Regards,Gordon
http://freewebs.com/thehistoryvault/ | | | |
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AntArch
New Member
Posts:19
| | 11 Sep 2005 03:01 PM | | | As a study in interoperability and the large scale exploitation of FISH it will be most interesting.
Interoperability and the integration of different resources would be the key issue in this context. Demonstrating that information standards can add value to date sets by allowing them to be leveraged into a common visualisation or analysis framework may increase the adoption opf the standard. This would have quite important ramficiations if this were to be applied to the datasets that create the NMR records. For a number of years I have been very concerned that the links between the NMR, the SMR and the fieldwork archive have been too loose. Ie. the SMR is a synthetic derivative of the fieldwork and the NMR a derivative of the SMR. The integration of interoperable data (with associated metadata) at its most refined level will remove many of the needs for an SMR or an NMR. The raw data would be fit for purpose no matter what the level of abstraction.
Will watch with interest
AntArch
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SteveW
Advanced Member
Posts:662
| | 11 Sep 2005 03:53 PM | | | AntArch -
Yes, agreed. I want to make the resource capable of both importing and exporting datasets to agreed standards. I've incorporated the EH Monument Types Thesaurus (which was a pain!) and the schema is scalable to hold other Thesauri. I'm currently working on the back end to ensure my local data can handle an export to FISH XML standards. I then need to ensure that the UI can handle XML imports.
It's something I've also been looking into for a long time. By day I'm a systems designer for a major corporation and we use a lot of services based on common standards, so I wanted to try to bring that into archaeology. | | | |
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SteveW
Advanced Member
Posts:662
| | 11 Sep 2005 04:49 PM | | | Further to this, I've just talked things over with Tyler Bell (CEO at Oxford ArchDigital, and chief architect of the MIDAS XML data standard) about the schema for the resource, and it looks like we're heading in the right direction. There are some tweaks that I need to do but essentially, if we can conform to the XML standards both in and out of the application then things are good. | | | |
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Baldlygo
New Member
Posts:60
| | 11 Sep 2005 08:19 PM | | quote:
Originally posted by SteveW
FF 1.0.7
- What does this mean - "shows googlemap error message on right"? Can you give me the error so I can investigate?
- I'll change the pointer, but if you click the + next to the Categories, and click on one where the ItemCount > 0 do you see details in the right hand pane?
- does the search work?
Did you ever see an alert msg saying your browser is not supported?
Steve White
Steve - Given it another look.
The message started - Note:
The Google service currently has a memory leak within the code.
The FF pointer did not show on the Home tab - Latest items lines.
I see Google map and details in IE and FF but not in my old browsers.
I did not see any alerts re old browsers on my earlier tests. | | | |
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SteveW
Advanced Member
Posts:662
| | 11 Sep 2005 08:42 PM | | | Ah, thanks.
- The Note about Google is my own text just to show people that it's not the fault of my own application if they have memory issues. It'll stay until Google update their API which I'm told is very soon. A point to note is that as part of the design the map is not supposed to appear on first load of the application, but will appear when the user browses or searches for an Item. It was my way of reducing the memory problem, plus giving more space to do other things.
- I'll look into the FF mouseover on Latest Items (something I was aware of).
- OK so IE and FF are good, I'll install some other browsers and report back here.
- Odd about unsupported browsers, since that is supposed to be picked up by the Google API function. I'll add a function myself and return a warning msg to the screen for unsupported browsers.
Thanks a lot for testing, this really helps.
Steve White | | | |
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SteveW
Advanced Member
Posts:662
| | 11 Sep 2005 10:08 PM | | | I've added a Help page and an Issues Log so we can track any issues and updates. They can be found by clicking the relevant tab in the top menu. | | | |
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SteveW
Advanced Member
Posts:662
| | 11 Dec 2005 11:27 AM | | | I've updated the browser check on the default page of the application. The warning message is only visible to non-supported browsers. Alos updated the issue log. | | | |
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SteveW
Advanced Member
Posts:662
| | 11 Dec 2005 11:36 AM | | | Anyone know of a free (or very low cost) UK geocoding service that will automatically convert PostCode to Latitude/Longitude, or GridRef to Latitude/Longitude? It would be very handy as it would reduce the amount of admin time when people add their own items. Currently Admin needs to do a manual conversion for each Item. | | | |
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AntArch
New Member
Posts:19
| | 11 Dec 2005 11:46 AM | | | Have you tried: http://deformedweb.co.uk/trigs/services.html
Which has the following co-ord conversion system
http://www.nearby.org.uk/coord.cgi
They say they can provide their service to other sites. Possibly for free to those that are charitable or educational.
I'd also link to see the system in pratice and provide feedback if thats OK.
Ant | | | |
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SteveW
Advanced Member
Posts:662
| | 11 Dec 2005 11:59 AM | | | Thanks Ant. Funny enough, the nearby.org.uk one is the one I use manually. I'll send them a mail and see if I can consume some kind of web service or see what they suggest.
Steve White | | | |
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SteveW
Advanced Member
Posts:662
| | 25 Apr 2008 09:01 PM | | | I've opened up the Add an Item page now. That means anyone can contribute to the resource provided they add either PostCode or GridRef so I can work out Lat/Lng manually, pending an available web service. | | | |
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SteveW
Advanced Member
Posts:662
| | 25 Apr 2008 09:01 PM | | | I've added a paragraph about the new resource on the home page of the portal.
I just wanted to say thanks to all the people on this forum who've helped to get it this far. There are loads of things in the pipeline for this tool, and I hope it will prove useful. I also hope that it will give others ideas on how geo-referenced data can be displayed on the net with minimal cost.
If anyone's got any suggestions for improvements, or indeed any criticisms it would be good to hear them.
cheers,
Steve White | | | |
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SteveW
Advanced Member
Posts:662
| | 25 Apr 2008 09:01 PM | | | Coming soon...
I've spoken to David at www.bajr.org and he's agreed that we can use his data in the new resource. I've written a couple of asp pages for him that spills out his data into XML. We'll then link to the page and show the data in the resource. Tested it locally and it flys on FF, but poor old IE chugs along a bit.
... I'm still aware that if there are more items than 10 then the marker icon doesn't display. This is because we're linking directly to the Google icon collection, which only goes up to J. I'm in the process of creating some new icons that will get over this. | | | |
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