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David Larlet's Diary

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Towards uMap 3 😱

Posted by David Larlet on 16 July 2024 in English.

↓ Version française ci-dessous ↓

The latest 2.4.X release sets the path for two major requested features: real-time collaboration and one-click remote data importers.

Additionally, minor improvements and bugfixes have made the tool more stable and usable.

Real-time collaboration

Thanks to our NLnet sponsorship, we have been able to make the first push in that direction. This is not yet activated in any (known) instance but the underlying code is deployed and we will be able to manage allocated resources and fine-tune how websockets are deployed. Details of the next steps are available on Alexis’ blog post.

Given the required server changes for that new feature, it will be part of a future 3.X version when the dust has settled.

Screenshot of the real-time collaboration switch in map settings.

Remote data importers

We made 4 importers to begin with:

See full entry

uMap 2 and beyond 🚀

Posted by David Larlet on 23 February 2024 in English.

A major version of uMap has been released last week.

This release is inauguring a new era in versioning uMap: in the future, we’ll take care of better documenting breaking changes, so expect more major releases from now on. More details on how we version.

A comprehensive changelog for that version is available in our technical documentation. Most of the changes for a major version are indeed technical, we are taking care of people deploying and maintaining instances with that approach. User-facing features are deployed continuously with our minor versions. We think that scheme is more valuable for the community.

It doesn’t mean you will not see improvements with that release though. Most notably, you’ll face:

A revamped dashboard with multiple options for your maps (including a bulk download / backup)

A hard work by @davidbgk and @Aurelie-Jallut!

revamped dashboard

Experimental drag and drop of file on the map container

See full entry

uMap: fine-grained permissions and more

Posted by David Larlet on 27 September 2023 in English.

In the previous episode…

We finally managed to tackle a very popular feature request: datalayers’ fine-grained permissions 🎉. This is a huge step forward, allowing for a given map owner to only open a particular datalayer to edition. It will help people with contributive maps who need to setup a stable/fixed base layer. It also paved the way for even more control over the objects that are allowed for addition and/or edition. Please share with us your desired workflows.

Two datalayers with different permissions

On the UX side of the project, we made a couple of adjustments and fixes to make the editor more intuitive and consistent. Do you see these new crispy icons on the screenshot above? Hopefully it will bring more users, hence more contributors! A couple of new faces jumped in recently and we’re so happy about that 🤗.

You can also look up for icons by name in the ‘Shape properties’ panel, one of our next steps will be to ease icons’ management and additions, another long-awaited feature:

See full entry