Track: Public Access and the Internet
Make It Simple: MapGarden Experience in Interface Design for a Web-enabled GIS
Anak Agung Gde AgungUsing Esri's Internet Map Server and MapObjects programming, researchers at Rutgers University are developing MapGarden, a Web-enabled GIS resource for New Jersey GIS data. User friendliness is probably the most important issue for a Web-enabled GIS such as MapGarden, and to keep it simple is one of the central themes in the process of prototyping. This paper discusses our experiences in the prototyping ofMapGarden. Three major aspects are discussed in this paper. First, we describe our approach to basic site navigation to give easy access to information matching the user's interests. Second, we needed to decide whether we wanted to burden the users with plug-ins to make their browsers share more of the request processing or to leave most of the load on the server. Finally, the aspect that applies to most, if not all, Web sites is graphic presentation.
Anak Agung Gde Agung
Rutgers University
33 Livingston Avenue
New Brunswick, NJ 08901
USA
Telephone: (732) 932-3133, x. 585
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E-mail: agung@rci.rutgers.edu