OpenStreetMap available again

Earlier this year aprs.fi was unavailable for a short while after Google disabled Maps API access due to mixed OSM/Google content being visible on the site.

I now spent a couple evenings setting up OSM again in a way that would not interfere with Google's policy of not allowing Google content such as Street View or address search results to be shown on top of non-Google maps. The result of that work is now live on aprs.fi.

OpenStreetMap maps are again visible, but Street View buttons and controls are hidden while in OSM mode.

While using OSM, address searches are done by using the GeoNames database. City lookups work quite well, but address searches do not seem to work, at least not for Finland. City/country lookups do not return information on how large the found place is, so zoom level does not adjust automatically to cover the place.

Beware: Cookies.

Credit: star5112 / Flickr Creative Commons

This is not the feature I actually wanted to implement next, but here goes.

aprs.fi now displays one of those oh-so-common warnings saying "This site uses cookies". There is some code in there to try to show the warning only to visitors from the European Union, but due to the inherent inaccuracy of GeoIP-type lookups, it may fail either way for some users.

aprs.fi has used cookies from the beginning, just like roughly all the other web sites in the world. Nothing in the use of cookies has changed (they're used everywhere and by everyone), but new regulations set by the European Union, and requirements set by Google, require aprs.fi to display this warning.

Once you click the '✖' button in the corner of the warning, a cookie will be set, so that your selection is remembered, preventing the warning box from appearing again. It'd be annoying if the box appeared every time. If you have disabled cookies, the warning will appear every time, since the web site cannot know if you have dismissed the box before or not, since that information would be stored in a cookie.

More information:

• Google EU user consent policy
• Google EU consent policy FAQ
• Google helping publishers with cookie consent
• Privacy policy of aprs.fi