Zoomable maps and user accounts on FixMyStreet

Last week, FixMyStreet gained a number of new features that we hope you will find useful.

Birmingham on FixMyStreetStroud on FixMyStreetFirstly, we’ve thrown away our old maps and replaced them with new, shiny, zoomable maps. This should make it easier for people to find and report problems, especially in sparser locations. We’re using the OS StreetView layer (hosted internally) when zoomed in, reverting to Bing Maps’ Ordnance Survey layer when zoomed out, as we felt this provided the best combination for reporting problems. In urban areas, you can still see individual houses, whilst in more rural areas the map with footpaths and other such features is probably of more use. FixMyStreet tries to guess initially which map would be most appropriate based upon population density, meaning a search for Stroud looks a bit different from that for Birmingham.

FixMyStreet with OpenStreetMap

OpenStreetMap fans, don’t worry – as part of our mapping technology upgrade, you can now use osm.fixmystreet.com to access your favourite mapping instead.

Secondly, we now have user accounts. We’ve rolled these out alongside our current system of email confirmation, and it’s up to you which you use when reporting a problem or leaving an update. This means that those who come to the site one time only to report a pothole can continue to do so quickly, but have the option of an account if they want. Having an account means you no longer have to confirm reports and updates by email, and you have access to a page listing all the reports you’ve made through FixMyStreet, and showing these reports on a (obviously new and shiny) summary map.

Adur District Council reports

Other improvements include a much nicer All Reports section, so you can see all reports to Adur District Council on a map, paginated and with the boundary of the council marked – and individual wards of councils now each have their own pages too.

I’ll follow up this post with another, more technical, look at the maps and how they work, for anyone who’s interested 🙂

2 Comments

  1. The slippy maps don’t work well on my iPad. But why don’t you use Safari location services to fetch location?

  2. The next version of OpenLayers, which is out soon, has much better touch screen handling, I understand, so we’ll switch to that as soon as possible after it’s out. I forgot to mention that in my technical post, thanks for asking.

    Asking the user for their location via the browser’s built in mechanisms is certainly something we plan to do, yes, and other mobile improvements; when we have the time available- or perhaps someone will contribute the code, it’s all open source 🙂