Ancient Roam

New Digimap Roam for all Collections

ecls/ 1 December 2017/ Digimap News, New Features, Of Interest

On 30th November 2017, we released Beta versions of our new Roam mapping application for all Digimap Collections. Log in to Digimap and click on each Collection to find the link to each new Roam:

The functionality of the new application remains the same, but we hope you agree that the updated look is easier to use.

Most importantly, BOTH versions of Roam (new and old) will run in parallel for an extended period of time to give users the opportunity to get used to the new interface. We will review this at the beginning of March 2018 with a view to establishing a date for withdrawal of the old application.

Known Issues

All applications have undergone thorough testing, but there are still a few issues that we working on, for example some elements can be slow using Internet Explorer. If you spot anything that is not behaving correctly, please report this to us.

We encourage you to try the new beta versions and we welcome any feedback you have.

Email: edina@ed.ac.uk

Dec 1, 2017

Coming soon: New Roam for Digimap

ecls/ 31 August 2017/ Digimap News, New Features, Of Interest

As mentioned at Geoforum earlier this year, we’re currently working hard on a new version of Digimap Roam. The new-look application will bring Digimap Roam, the online mapping tool in the Digimap family, bang up to date with the latest web technologies available. Whilst the functionality will remain the same, the look and feel of the interface will be more modern. The majority of functions will be available from a new menu panel down the left hand side which is hidden by default maximising the area available for the main map element. By utilising the latest technologies we will be able to add new functionality and make further enhancements to the application in the future.

The new interface makes further improvements to the experience on mobile devices, an area where we’re seeing an increase in usage across the service. A mock up of how the new Geology Roam interface might look is included below to give you an idea of the proposed layout and styling:

Mockup of the new Geology Roam interface

Currently we are on target to launch the new interface early in the first semester of the 2017-2018 academic year, but we will post progress updates on this blog as the new interface approaches completion. There will be a phased release with the new Roam applications with the Ordnance Survey Collection being first in line.

We appreciate that you may have teaching or lecture materials that may require updating as a result of this change in interface, so we will run all the existing Roam applications alongside the new versions so you can get up to speed with the new interface whilst the existing versions are still available. At the moment we anticipate running both versions in each Collection side by side until at least the end of the year. During this period we would welcome any comments and feedback that you may have.

As ever, if you have any questions about the new Roam, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Aug 31, 2017

Detailed contemporary mapping added to Ancient Roam

ecls/ 2 June 2016/ Data Changes & Additions, Digimap News, New Features, Of Interest

We have recently added detailed, large scale, contemporary mapping to Ancient Roam allowing users to compare side by side historic mapping with detailed modern mapping.

The detailed modern mapping is visible at all zoom levels in both the 1-up and 2-up views. The most detailed mapping uses the new OS OpenMap – Local product, which is the most detailed Open Data product available from Ordnance Survey and can be downloaded through the Digimap Ordnance Survey collection. We further enhanced the most detailed mapping to include the additional features from OS VectorMap District:

Contours
Spot heights
Medical centres
Police stations
Heritage sites
Places of worship

The other products we have added are OS StreetView and OS VectorMap District Raster to provide a comprehensive set of contemporary map data suitable for all zoom levels in Ancient Roam.

We hope you find the new data useful, if you have any questions about the updates or Digimap please contact us:

Phone: 0131 650 3302
Email: edina@ed.ac.uk

Jun 2, 2016

Digimap Roam: Printing PDFs from Chrome

ecls/ 15 July 2014/ Digimap News, Help

We are getting a few reports from users experiencing issues when printing PDF maps using Chrome web browser. Unfortunately, the map watermark and any semi-transparent annotations are being printed as solid filled features. We have discovered that this occurs when the PDF is viewed and printed from within the Chrome browser, using Chrome’s in built PDF plugin.

We have investigated this problem and discovered that the bug is with Chrome and occurs with all PDFs with semi-tranparent layers not just those created by Digimap. The problem only happens on Windows computers with versions of Chrome released since the end of April (Chrome 34.0.1847 onwards).

Digimap users with Chrome should see a warning when they open the Print… window, informing them about the problem.

As the alert message suggests you can disable the plug-in to prevent it from opening PDFs or you can use the following workaround.
Printing from Chrome alternative method

Create your printable map as normal it will appear at the bottom of your web browser.
Don’t click the file name to open the PDF, click the little arrow and choose ‘Open with system viewer’.
Providing it is installed on your machine, the map will open in Adobe Reader which will print the semi transparent layers correctly.

We hope that the issue is resolved by Google who develop the Chrome browser, it has been reported to them. Should you wish to disable the plug-in entirely then you can follow the instructions with the image below. You can also download the map as a file to your computer, and then open it directly with Adobe Reader, this is usually the best option anyway as it allows you to print the PDF multiple times or store it if you don’t want to print it just yet.

Type Chrome://plugins into the web address bar in chrome, this opens a list of all the plug-ins you have installed for Chrome.
Scroll down to the Chrome PDF Viewer on the Plug-ins page and click on the blue “Disable” link.
You will no longer have the option to view PDFs in the web browser.
Use this page to reactivate the plug-in if you want to reverse the change in the future.

If you need any assistance with opening your PDF map, please contact the EDINA helpdesk:

Email: edina@ed.ac.uk
Phone: 0131 650 3302

Jul 15, 2014

Historic Digimap: Printing options improved

ecls/ 10 January 2014/ Digimap News, New Features

Ancient Roam in Historic Digimap has had its print options updated so it now has the same set of options as the other Roam facilities. The two big changes to note are that you can now print up to A0 and that you can print a single county in areas where several overlap.

Until this change was made it was impossible to print an area with overlapping maps without printing all the counties available rather than just the one(s) you were viewing on the screen. Any print files now generated in areas with overlapping counties will only show those which are displayed on screen. This allows you to have the control over how much information is on your map and to make the decision to show more or less information.

Sometimes it can be an advantage to show multiple counties as even though the sheets overlap the actual map information doesn’t. However in the example above you can see how the counties overwrite each other in the map on the left and so produce a very confusing and fairly useless result; by switching one county off you can produce a much clearer print map such as the one on the right. [Click on the images above to view larger versions of the maps.]

The ability to print maps up to A0 brings Ancient Roam into line with the other Roam facilities so you can now print at this very large size in any Digimap collection.

Jan 10, 2014

Digimap Roam updates now in service

ecls/ 19 August 2013/ Digimap News, New Features, Of Interest

The changes we previewed in the last blog post have now been put into service.

We hope that you find the these changes an improvement and we would really appreciate any feedback you may have:

email: edina@ed.ac.uk
phone: 0131 650 3302

Read the previous blog posts about the updates to learn more about the changes we have made:

Aug 19, 2013

Annotations Tools in Ancient Roam

ecls/ 16 September 2011/ Digimap News, New Features

Ancient Roam now has the annotation tools, so all the Roam facilities allow you to add your own features (symbols, lines, polygons and text) to the map.

We are always looking for feedback so if you have any requests for symbols, line styles or any other features you would like put on the map, let us know. You can comment on this post or email us directly here:

Mailto: EDINA help desk

Remember there is a video on how to use the general features of the Annotation Tools on YouTube:

[youtube width=”640″ height=”390″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSkTZvMNyKU&hd=1[/youtube]

Sep 16, 2011

2011 Data Update

ecls/ 11 August 2011/ Data Changes & Additions, Digimap News, New Features

This year’s annual data update will take place at the beginning of September. There will be a refresh the following Ordnance Survey products:

MasterMap Topography and ITN Layers
VectorMap Local
Meridian2
Strategi
MiniScale
Code-Point
Code-Point with Polygons
Boundary Line

1:250,000 Colour Raster
1:50 000 Colour Raster
1:25 000 Colour Raster
1:10 000 Raster
1:50 000 Scale Gazetteer

There will also be updated Hydrospatial data in Marine Digimap and a new version of the DiGMapGB-50 data in Geology Digimap.

Along with the new data Ancient Roam will be getting the Annotation Tools and there may be a bit of a surprise bonus addition to Digimap Roam. More information will be posted on the Blog, Twitter and Facebook page nearer the time.

Aug 11, 2011

High Quality PDF Printing For Ancient Roam

ecls/ 5 July 2011/ New Features

You can now download high quality PDF maps from Ancient Roam for printing. This element of the service has been quite tricky to implement, so until now we have only had the save image button to get a PNG image of the map you are viewing.

Now you can use the print button to access a similar interface to the ones found in all the other Roam services. You can see a sample PDF by clicking on the thumbnail below:

The Round Tower, Windsor Castle — A Sample PDF from Ancient Roam.

There are still a couple of options to add into Ancient Roam print maps; we need to add the ability to print 2up maps and the ability to switch off counties in areas where there are overlapping maps. Look out for these arriving in the near future.

Information about how to use all the features of Ancient Roam can be found on the following help page:

How to Use Ancient Roam

Jul 5, 2011

More Improvements Added 28th June

ecls/ 27 June 2011/ Data Changes & Additions, New Features, Service Availability

Some of the features mentioned in the previous blog post will be added into the services tomorrow, Tuesday 28th June:

More Improvements Coming Soon

Due to this work there will be some short Disruptions to all the services between 17:30 and 18:30. We hope you find the new features useful, please let us know if you have any feedback: