Release Notes

If the changes made below have broken something you used to rely on, then please drop me an email at bobosola@gmail.com. Alternatively, you could perhaps try OS Maps which is terrific value for money. It has all the online OS features you will likely ever need, including plotting & viewing saved routes and importing & exporting GPX files.

23rd November 2024

I've re-done the GPX uploading feature so that it now uses the File API instead of uploading to the server. That API didn't exist when I first wrote the site, and I never bothered updating the code on the basis of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". The new code means that a user's GPX tracks render much faster. I've also modernised much of the code base to use more modern practices such as async/await and other ES8 features. ES8 was supported in all major browsers by the end of 2017, so the new code should run just fine everywhere. If you have a browser which hasn't been updated in 7 years then you've got bigger problems than this site not working for you.

The site is now served over HTTP/3 QUIC and uses import maps and ES modules which allow "tree-shaking", i.e. only downloading the parts I need from external code libraries. This is faster than downloading entire libraries in the traditional manner.

I've also made some changes to the map info panel. The OS elevation chart now uses Chart.js rather then the old PHP-based JpGraph. Nothing wrong with JpGraph, but Chart.js seems to render quicker for my use case and has a fresh modern look.

I finally retired the old SRTM elevations page as no-one uses the SRTM 90m data set any more. And I'm never going to re-write it for the SRTM 30m data set, mainly because I use the OS Terrain 50 data these days.

28th October 2024

The Ordnance Survey map authentication mechanism (which is used get the maps from the OS servers) has been much improved and simplified. This has noticeably sped up the loading of the OS maps tiles. I should have done this ages ago but laziness kept getting in my way.

26th October 2024

It seems that the French IGN maps features may have been broken for a few months due to the French mapping service making a major change in their developer APIs earlier this year. Unfortunately, I didn't realise that this had happened until a couple of days ago, but it should be fixed now. The new API certainly feels very snappy and it now zooms in to house level. So it should be an improvement, hopefully.

29th February 2024

I got the urge to make some new features related to the Map search page, so much so that I've had to split it off to a whole new site: https://solentmaps.uk. All the Map search page features are over there, plus a whole load of new stuff. No other changes were made here.

7th February 2024

Added a new feature to locate your current position on OS maps (provided your device supports GPS location finding - nearly all modern phones do). So I have split the map search-related features off to a new Map search page, leaving the GPX-related ones where they were before. The map search pages now show a cross-hair to show exactly where the found location is. I have also added a blog page where I spout whatever incoherent thoughts come to mind.

12th January 2024

The site has moved to a new server. So I took the opportunity to make some changes:

• The site's appearance has been updated and simplified to make it work more uniformly across different devices (a big thanks here to Simple.css)
• The OS maps now render faster thanks to some code efficiencies with OS authentication tokens which I should have thought about much earlier
• The Google maps code has been updated to use Google's latest recommended API calls
• Uploaded GPX files now open up in a new tab which is easier for comparing tracks side-by-side

Hopefully there are no breaking changes this time, though you may need to do a refresh of the pages to clear any locally cached files. I try to only use JavaScript features which have been supported in all common browsers since 2017 so that the maps work on older devices. Often though, these decisions are forced on me by updates to the map providers' code. Map providers, like time and tide, wait for no man. Please do let me know if there are any problems with this release via the email address at the bottom of the page.

10th November 2022

Minor style and layout improvements for mobile devices. Fixed some map displays failing due to outdated OpenLayers CDN links.

9th November 2021

The elevations data panel and mini-graph shown when viewing a British GPX file have been updated to use OS Terrain 50 elevation data rather than SRTM data. The reasons for this are explained in the new OS Terrain 50 page, which developers might be interested in. Also, the site has undergone a much-needed content update, internal sort-out, de-lousing, and fumigation. So please let me know if anything which used to work is now broken (email address at the bottom of this page).

24th July 2021

The site has been re-written to use the new Ordnance Survey Maps API code. This was necessitated by the planned withdrawal of the OS OpenSpace code (in August 2021) on which this site was formerly based. The old code had been running since 2008 but would no longer work once OS switch off access to the old OpenSpace server. This has forced some changes to the site as follows:

The new good stuff:

• The site now contains 1:25k scale maps in addition to the 1:50k maps we had previously. Yes, the OS crown jewels for hikers and riders are now publicly available for free!
• GPX files now load up showing the full extent of the route or track (at the cost of the tile images loading more slowly than before).
• GPX distance and elevation summaries have been re-worked. If a GPX file has elevations in it, then they will be summarised as ascent and descent as before.
• Elevations and a graph using SRTM data have been added to allow a comparison against GPS-recorded elevation data (which is usually hideously inaccurate). This is nothing to do with the new OS APIs but they seemed like a useful addition.

The new not-so-good stuff:

• The new OS code only works with modern browsers. In particular, Internet Explorer will no longer work here. Recent versions of Chrome, Edge, Safari, Firefox et al. should all be fine.
• There is a monthly limit to the free access of 1:25k and 1:50k OS Leisure maps. If the limit is exceeded, then the OS maps won't render.

Sometime in 2004...

The handwritten site notes I wrote when the site was first built got eaten by a pterodactyl, sorry.