FOSS4G North America Conference 2013 Preliminary Program

applications.
Rich data sources: generic and powerful core data representations of tiled, single image, and
vector data make it easy to add support for a wide range of geospatial data sources.
Smooth and flexible interaction and animation: an optimized rendering path ensures that
interaction remains smooth at all times.
Compact library size: use of the Closure suite of tools creates keeps the build size small while
keeping the source code readable.
iD, a New Editor For OpenStreetMap
Tom MacWright, MapBox
The rise of collaborative maps and their expanding base of contributors is demanding new tools.
The OpenStreetMap project, the largest collaborative map, has historically used complex tools
which are less than user­friendly. To fix this, we're building iD, a new open­source editor for
OpenStreetMap.
iD is the first complete, open source map editor to be written in pure Javascript, and on the
cutting edge of user experience and design progress. It's also one of the largest, most active
open source projects to use the D3 visualization library, which is used both as a
general­purpose Javascript library and as a major part of iD's visualization of geodata and
interactivity.
This talk will focus on the design decisions behind iD, the experience of writing visually and
computationally difficult applications in a browser environment, and the toolchain used. The
development process has featured quite a few interesting problems, like headless unit testing in
Javascript and fast label placement on the client side with SVG. iD has helped to identify many
strengths and weaknesses of the details of browser SVG and Javascript implementations. We'll
also discuss the future of iD outside of OSM and as a reusable library for other mapping
applications.