Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
ActiveX components or Java applets. Cascading style sheets were strongly promoted precisely
because pages using them correctly should be usable even with browsers that ignore them.
However, AJAX methodologies would clearly have been unacceptable had the concept been
defined when the programme started. Strictly speaking, all of these technologies could be
used to provide optional additional access methods, but our resources never permitted work
on such extras. It rapidly became clear that all graphics generation would have to be done on
the server, and this obviously limited interactivity. The screen layout had to work acceptably
on an 800 by 600 display.
A further set of issues followed from the size and nature of the audience. It was extremely
difficult to estimate likely numbers of users prior to launch, but the large and well-publicised
problems encountered by the UK National Archives with their 1901 Census web site in the
spring of 2002, coming as they did a few months into our own work, made the dangers
clear and it was obvious we needed to plan for large numbers of simultaneous users. This
proved justified. Funding issues meant we had to launch with a site that had not been
fully stress tested, and strong publicity including a television appearance - for a statistical
visualization project - led to the site crashing continuously for the fortnight following the
launch. Figure 13.4 shows the results of that problematic launch, but also that we are now
handling more users than, for example, the Office of National Statistics'
Neighbourhood
Statistics
site. Serving a large general audience also meant that our repertoire of maps and
graphs had to be immediately comprehensible, so nothing too avant garde.
13.4.1 Mapping rates
Our statistical maps are generated by a specially written servlet based around the Geotools
Java class library (http://geotools.codehaus.org/) and also containing code from the
80,000
70,000
60,000
50,000
40,000
30,000
20,000
10,000
0
Aug-04 Feb-05 Sep-05 Mar-06 Oct-06 Apr-07
Nov-07
Date
Figure 13.4
A Vision of Britain through Time
: unique users 2004-2007
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