Poster Maker

The old post.htm and jpost.htm pages were really API documentation about the poster and jumpmap services, with built-in demos that could be used to generate images. But they were decidedly non-friendly.

To go with the new UI on the main page (still in test!) I've spun up a new "Poster Maker" page that aims to be user-friendly. It handles sector, subsector and jumpmap images, and offers a "quick preview" mode. It also defaults to PDF since that's the best format to print if you don't know what you're doing.

Try it out, send me feedback!

http://travellermap.com/poster.html

(The "options" box rather obviously needs to be replaced with a slew of checkboxes for the individual knobs. I'll get to that when I can.) - done!

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Rendering Refactor and Custom Jump Maps

One commonly requested feature is now live: Custom Jump Maps

Just as the Poster API supports HTTP POST, the JumpMap API now supports the same capability and there's a demo page that lets you upload files or copy/paste your own sector data into a form. Note that neighboring sectors appear empty if your jump map is extends past the edge of a sector.

I've also done some substantial refactoring of the guts of the rendering and styles code, which may help site stability a little bit. I found/patched a bug in the PDFSharp rendering library along the way. Ideally this hasn't changed anything, but please let me know if something suddenly renders differently (color, position, style) or has disappeared - it's not intentional! 

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Making a Dent in the To-Do List

I had a little bit of time today so I decided to make sure the To-Do List was updated on Trello. This should cover everything that's been mentioned in comments here and sent in private email. If I missed anything let me know - or even better, sign up to Trello and I can let you add it to the list yourself.

I knocked off a handful of easy items:

• Subsector names will once again show by default at 64 pixels/parsec (although dimmer than before)
• Subsector names will NOT show by default for Poster.aspx-generated images, although this can be turned on via options
• Decoding of "packed" base codes (2 = N+S, A = N+S, B = N+W) now handles per-allegiance specific packing: Vargr: H = C+G, Aslan: U = R+T, Hiver: F = L+M
• Allegiance code "--" doesn't render. (Perhaps it should show as "Na" so it isn't assumed to be Imperial, but -- is usually only used far away from the Imperium so I don't think it's an issue.

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Client Code Update

I've just pushed a set of updates to the client files - the HTML, JavaScript, and CSS that makes up the pages. This affects the main page, the iframe page, and the touch page. These now all share common logic which will make updates easier. The visible changes are:

• Intermediate levels are used when zooming in with the mouse wheel. This may mean that the "Scale" field in the control panel will go blank, but if you're using the wheel you probably aren't using the drop-down.
• When zooming, the previous image tiles are used until the new tiles load. Combined with the previous, this means zooming is much smoother. 
• The credits display at the bottom of the page (which shows credits, sector data, world data, and one-click generators for LBBs and Posters) now [EDIT: Based on feedback in the comments]  tracks your mouse hover coordinates updates on click/doubleclick/drag rather than just what's centered on the page.
• When you zoom by double-clicking or using the wheel the mouse position is retained, so you can "zoom in" on something that isn't centered.
• Added Facebook and Twitter buttons next to the Google Plus buttons.
• The "you are here" and overlay URL parameters from the iframe API can be used on the main map page. 
• Tweaked the [-] and [+] buttons in the control panel to be the same size. Yay for −

Note: I only tested as far back as IE8. According to analytics, I have a small number of IE7 users. If they report problems I may be able to fix it, but only if they complain. My testing on browsers other than IE,  Chrome and Safari (iOS) has been limited, but Firefox and Opera are usually pretty well behaved.

As always, let me know what I broke and I'll try and fix it quickly.

EDIT: Remember to mention which browser+version and which operating system+version you're using, too.

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In other news - no progress on the outages. I've found and fixed a couple of bugs with cached state handling but I still see the service going down when usage is high. I have monitoring set up now so that as I make changes I can have a higher confidence that they haven't made things worse.

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Credits Links

A minor tweak I've been meaning to do for a while now: in the "credits" area at the bottom, the sector name is now a link to the LBB generator page, and a link to the PDF poster generator is added after the sector data link.

I've also started some substantial modernization work to the HTML/CSS/JavaScript behind the page. If anything broke please let me know, as I'm not being as diligent as I could be in testing on all browsers.

Completely unrelated: I've also started experimenting with shaded regions as a rendering option, but while a 95% solution was easy the 100% solution will require more thought and effort - dang hexes! This is not enabled yet. Ω

Now Serving PDFs

It's live. (Be gentle!)

The API docs have been updated, but here's the short version:

For Poster.aspx, Tile.aspx or JumpMap.aspx, either pass an HTTP "Accept" header with "application/pdf" or include "accept=application/pdf" in either the query string (GET) or form data (POST).

Since it took a whopping 10 seconds, I also added a checkbox to the post example if you want to generate PDFs from your custom data.

Once any bugs are shaken out of this update I plan to add a link to the bottom of the main map page which offers "give me a printable version" of whatever you're looking at. I could make it either "smart" and offer Charted Space, Domain, Sector, Quadrant or Subsector depending on scale, or "dumb" and spew out exactly what you see on screen but in PDF form. I lean towards "smart". Ω

Minor Poster tweaks

Per request, I've added the ability to specify style options (and other parameters) from the post.htm demo page. As a convenience for web authors, the Poster API now handles options passed in as POST parameters, not just GET parameters. Ω