User Interface Updates and New Community Contributed Data Feature

Jul 26, 2012

We are pleased to announce the release of OpenTopography v.3.8 that includes several exciting improvements to the user interface designed to streamline data discovery and access. We've rearranged the data discovery map and data access pages to use the full width of the OT website, and have also made changes to make it easier to access various data products and metadata.

Also part of the OT v.3.8 release is a new feature to allow users to register their datasets with OT. Modeled after the OpenTopography Tool Registry, the OpenTopography Data Contribution module allows users to register metadata and spatial extent information about a lidar dataset hosted elsewhere. These community-contributed data will appear on the OT Find Data map and will be discoverable by users alongside data hosted by OpenTopography and partners such as USGS.

OT 3.8 includes the following:

Data Discovery:

  • The left-hand sidebar on all data pages has been removed to allow for full-width maps and interfaces. Links previously in the sidebar (myOpenTopo etc) are in a horizontal sub-menu at top of page.
  • Improvements to the "Find Data" map interface. The "Select A Region" button on the map now includes Undo / Redo / Reset buttons which allow the user to the move between various selections.
  • Selection results have been streamlined with a single and more visible "Get Data" button.
  • Better sync between search results below map and the map display.
  • Vertical "System Status" tab on left occupies less screen space and can be held open when system updates or outages are likely to impact OT operations.
  • On the dataset listing page, a filter by location drop down menu is now available to quickly locate all data in a single state.

Dataset Pages:

  • Several tweaks to visual appearance of the pages, including some reorganization of menus and dialog boxes to take advantage of additional screen width.
  • Corrected bug related to manual entry of bounding box coordinates.
  • Exposed ability to select additional point cloud classes (when included in the dataset).

Data Contribution Module:

  • New feature is modeled after the OpenTopography Tool Registry designed to allow community members to register metadata for datasets hosted elsewhere.
  • The contribution module is available in myOpenTopo under Contribute when logged into OT.

As always, we welcome your comments and feedback about the new updates to OpenTopography. Contact us via this form: http://www.opentopography.org/contact/