Organize Backgrounds list by category

[jidanni]

Description

Currently we see:

Backgrounds

• Bing aerial imagery
• CyclOSM
• Esri World Imagery
• Esri World Imagery (Clarity) Beta
• Mapbox Satellite
• Maxar Premium Imagery
• OpenStreetMap (Standard)
• OpenTopoMap
• Stamen Terrain
• NLSC General Map with Contour line
• Taiwan Land-Section Data
• Taiwan Village Boundaries
• Taiwan e-Map Open Data
• None
• Custom

Better would be:

Backgrounds

• Bing aerial imagery
• Esri World Imagery
• Esri World Imagery (Clarity) Beta
• Mapbox Satellite
• Maxar Premium Imagery

---

• CyclOSM
• OpenStreetMap (Standard)
• OpenTopoMap
• Stamen Terrain

---

• NLSC General Map with Contour line
• Taiwan Land-Section Data
• Taiwan Village Boundaries
• Taiwan e-Map Open Data

---

• None
• Custom

[1ec5]

The suggested organization would require osmlab/editor-layer-index#136.

[jidanni]

For now please move CyclOSM down to my suggested position.

[1ec5]

iD doesn’t special-case specific layers to put them in specific locations, other than None and Custom (which are built-in options rather than layers loaded from ELI).

[jidanni]

Looking at where the alphabet breaks order, I detect three groups above.
Hmm, so apparently CyclOSM needs to be renamed O-CyclOSM through Z-CyclOSM,
as a hack, to get it to group properly with the non-image layers!

[1ec5]

Oh huh, I never noticed that it does the same in the U.S. with “National Agricultural Imagery Program” appearing between “Stamen Terrain” and “U.S. Forest Service roads”. Looks like it’s actually sorted first in descending order by coverage area, then in ascending order by name:

iD/modules/ui/sections/background_list.js

Lines 171 to 175 in e2a5345

	.sort(function(a, b) {
	return a.best() && !b.best() ? -1
	: b.best() && !a.best() ? 1
	: d3_descending(a.area(), b.area()) || d3_ascending(a.name(), b.name()) || 0;
	});

It’s a bit unfortunate that the first sort is in descending order, because it shifts the local sources down to where users are less likely to notice them. I guess the expectation is that good local sources are already marked as best in ELI, but that’s a tricky decision because “best” can mean many things: osmlab/editor-layer-index#130.

[jidanni]

Also

• OpenStreetMap (Standard)
  Data guaranteed to already be in iD.
• OpenTopoMap
  same, except for contour related...

So maybe they should be real low in the list.

[todrobbins]

I like the idea of grouping the available layers in types (map renderings, remote sensing/imagery), and maybe even allow for the list to be rearranged by drag+drop to your preference. 🤷🏻‍♂️

[jidanni]

I actually was thinking of giving titles to each of the groups I made within the horizontal bars: Imagery, Maps, Local sources, etc.

[tyrasd]

I think as a start, we could at least sort by the imagery's ELI category which would be osmbasedmap for cyclosm for example.

[1ec5]

Cool, I hadn’t realized osmlab/editor-layer-index#733 introduced a category system. I guess osmlab/editor-layer-index#136 is just tracking a follow-on discussion about a specific categorization issue.

[boothym]

Just to say that I agree with this - I've misclicked on CyclOSM a number of times since it was moved to 2nd in the list!

I made a similar suggestion years ago when the layers more than 20 years old were removed from iD, of having a dropdown where for example historic layers could be hidden rather than removed altogether.

#3453 (comment)

[endolith]

Yes, please put all the satellite maps together