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The KronoKarta map is an interactive time-map for British history. This is a working (mostly) prototype and you are invited to try it out and comment on any problems you have using it, ideas for how it might be improved, or just whether you think it's a good idea. The guide tab has a brief explanation of how to use the map.

Please register and add or edit content and Feedback any comments or reports or difficulties.

The project has a similar ethos to Wikipedia, the world's biggest encyclopedia whose content is provided by its users, and to OpenStreetMap, arguably the best global map, which is continuously being updated and where everything on the map has been contributed by ordinary users.

KronoKarta draws on other open-access building blocks: map navigation uses OpenLayers, the timeline is from MIT's Simile project, and the map imagery is from OpenStreetMap and Portsmouth University's Vision of Britain project.

The prototype works well using Google Chrome but has not yet been tested thoroughly with other browsers and there are difficulties getting it to work in Internet Explorer. Reports on how it performs (and looks) using your favourite browser and platform would be welcome.

The map occupies the lower part of the KronoKarta screen with a timeline at the top and the control bar in between. The map shows historical features against a background of the present-day or historical maps. Two buttons zoom in (+) and out (-) and there is a visual scale bar as well as a display of the coordinates of the centre of the map. The timeline has bars showing the timespan of the historical features shown on the map and can be dragged left or right to mover backwards or forwards in time. As features pass in or out of the current timeframe (indicated by the shaded area in the centre of the timeline overview) they appear or disappear on the map, animating the development of the topography over time. The map can be dragged in the usual way and clicking at a point will centre the map there.

The default (and currently the only) dataset is topography: historical map features. In due course it will be possible to view other datasets such as land use, populations and ancestry. Themes will allow selective views of datasets such as transport - roads, canals and railways.

Data is added and edited by users. Anyone can register. Once logged in they will be able to use the + icon to add new features to the map and the database.

No features will appear at smaller scales. The visible area at small scales is so large there could be excessive amounts of data, and at small scales, features could be crowded together too much to see. use the smaller scales for navigating around Britain and zoom in to larger scales to view, add and edit features.

Features appear on the map in three forms: places such as buildings or battle sites are represented by icons, areas such as towns or woodland are drawn as coloured polygons, and linear features such as roads or canals appear as paths. Places are positioned with a single click on the map, while areas and paths follow a series of clicks, finished by clicking the OK tick below the edit form (shown in the last of these thumbnail screenshots) which allows users to enter titles, dates, descriptions and (optionally) links to images or web pages (at Flickr or Wikipedia for example). The dates are used to represent features in the timeline above the map.

A fairly small selection of feature types is offered. Any attempt at a comprehensive list would be unwieldy and would inevitably still leave out some possible types. The options are chosen to be a representative range of (historical) map features and to provide a set of recognisable icons and identifiable colours for paths and area features. If there is no exact match, choose the nearest (such as park/estate for a sports ground).

If you change your mind about adding a new feature click cancel at the bottom of the list.

As well as the present-day map (sourced from OpenStreetMap) there are historical background maps available (from the Portsmouth University Vision of Britain project) which allow mid-nineteenth or mid-twentieth-century Ordnance Survey maps to be used as the background. This gives more context to relatively recent history, but adding and editing map features must be done against the present-day map as the difficulties of scaling and aligning old maps means registration can be approximate.

The search box lets you search for places in Britain by name. Matches will be listed and clicking on one will take you there on the map. The search uses both KronoKarta's own topographical features database and the GeoNames internet service but this may be extended to include matches from the Vision of Britain search engine.

Click a choice to centre the map on its location or click cancel at the bottom of the list if you don't want to go there.

Clicking on a feature highlights it in yellow and displays information about it in an information panel at the top-right corner of the screen (next thumbnail). It is possible for a feature to have more than one figure on the map (such as a series of paths for a Roman road) and any other figures for this feature are 'lowlighted' with a dimmer yellow. If you click on one of the nodes of a path or an area it is circled in yellow and you can move it, delete it or add more nodes. Clicking elsewhere on the map (or on the information panel) removes the highlighting and the information panel, deselecting the feature.

Just as one feature can have several figures on the map, one figure can be used by more than one feature. An example would be where a stone castle was built on the site of an earlier wooden castle or fort. Two figures, each with their own dates, would use the same icon on the map.

Details of a selected feature appear in an information panel at the top left corner of the window. This gives the feature's title and dates with any other information which as been entered. There may be a brief description and you may see more... if there is a link to an image on the Flickr or Picasa sites or to a page relating to the feature in Wikipedia or elsewhere. These will appear in another tab or window.

Clicking on the X icon or the information panel itself deselects the feature and the panel disappears, or logged-in users can click EDIT to add to or correct what is shown.

The edit form appears when you elect to EDIT a feature or when you add a new feature so you can input data relating to the feature. As a minimum, a title and a start year are needed, but you can also add other years if you know them as well as a brief description and a link to an image or a page of information elswhere on the web.

This history map has a cut-off date of 2000, so if the end year is left blank, 2000 is the default and the feature will be described in the information panel as still existing. Entering the same year for the start and finish will produce an 'instant' event. These may be widely used in other datasets (such as births in an ancestry map) but would be unusual for topographical features. Where there is doubt about when a feature was built (or if it took some years to build) or destroyed, the latest start and earliest end fields should be used.

When adding a new feature, click on the map to locate it. Use a series of clicks to define a path or area, ending by clicking the OK tick. With the feature drawn (in yellow) and the data entered, clicking the OK tick will save it to the database and draw it in its final form.

Other icons allow you to add (+) another figure or more nodes to the feature, to remove (-) a node, figure or the whole feature, or to move a node or a place feature. The x can be used to cancel a change.

You are invited to offer your comments on the KronoKarta project. Do you like the idea? Would you be interested in participating? If you tried the viewer/editor, how did you find it: easy? tricky? Did you have any specific problems? Do you have any ideas to improve the viewer or for the project as a whole?

You can get in touch by phone, email (or even write a letter). My contact details are:

elvin ibbotson
elvinibbotson@alittle.org.uk
The Byre, Ecclesbourne Lane
Idridgehay, Belper
Derbyshire DE56 2SB
tel. 07725 808340

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