Use Case: Allow a user to reset the map to their starting point

[NickFitz]

This issue is for discussion of the use case “Reset the map to the initial view”, its examples & list of required capabilities.

[prushforth]

Could it be as simple as adding a "Home" control to the map, as is often seen on Web maps? MapML hasn't implemented anything yet.

[AmeliaBR]

By "starting point", do you mean the initial view defined by the web page author? So it would be resetting any user pan & zoom.

Or, do you mean centering the map on user-based position, such as their current location or a saved "home" point?

[NickFitz]

I was thinking in terms of resetting the map to the original view provided by the web page author. For example, an encyclopaedia page concerning a battle might have a map showing the location of the battlefield. Once the user has explored the surrounding area, perhaps ending up far away from the original location and/or at a much different zoom level, it would be convenient for them to be able to reset the map to the location and zoom that the author had determined was most relevant to the text.

[Malvoz]

By "starting point", do you mean the initial view defined by the web page author? So it would be resetting any user pan & zoom.

Or, do you mean centering the map on user-based position, such as their current location or a saved "home" point?

In JS libraries it seems it is the convention to name such a control to reset the map to its starting point Home. I think that is problematic, and it should be noted that UAs don't name such a control this way.

It may be misinterpreted by blind users (specifically in the context of a web map) to mean the individual's home (perhaps indicative of obtaining the user's location through the Geolocation API). For reference, this was discussed in Maps4HTML/MapML.js#200 (review) and Canadian-Geospatial-Platform/geoview#192.