User interface
Contents |
The map(main screen)
Edit map
Map type
Category filter
This option allows you to look for a specific place by category by filtering out other categories.
User profile
Your account/profile is also the place where you can see how many places you have created, how many you have edited, how many comments you have made. You can vote for other users: give them a good vote if you like what they have done, and where you can get feedback on what others think about your own work.
You can access your profile in two ways. The quickest way is to simply click the option on the Wikimapia Menu Bar that says "Hello, username." The other way is to select "Wikimapia," and then "Profile."
Language selection
This gives you the option to change the interface language. It also changes the preferred place description language.
Search
There are three things you can do with Wikimapia Search: you can search for places (the default), you can search for cities, and you can find locations via their geographic coordinates (longitude and latitude). All search functions are accessed via the text box and red Search button at the top right of the main Wikimapia screen. Just type one or more keywords into the box and click on Search. Your search results will be displayed in the window that opens, and you can then click on one of those, or check the next page of results if there are more.
The search results are presented in order of their distance from the map location you currently have on screen, although sometimes a few major cities are placed at the very top if they match what you searched for.
If you enter two or more search terms, you will find results where ALL those terms are present, so if you search for Santa Monica this means you will find locations where Santa AND Monica are present. It is not possible to search for places with Santa OR Monica. Nor is it possible to search for the entire string "Santa Monica", the quote signs are simply ignored and the results will be the same as if you entered Santa Monica (or Monica Santa). Capitalization is not important either, Monica and mOnIcA will produce the same results.
If you know the longitude and latitude of some place you can use Search to go directly there. Just enter the coordinates in the search box and then click on the "Go to this location:" that comes up. You can enter the coordinates as either decimals or degrees, minutes, seconds; so "50.5" and "50 30" are equivalent. The one thing you MUST include is the letters E/W and N/S after the numerical part, to specify whether it is East or West, and North or South. Two examples that are equivalent:
74.044w 40.689n
40 41 21 North 74 2 39 WEST
Zoom Control/ Zoom Levels
Zoom or Zooming is a basic feature of interactive maps. On the upper left side of Wikimapia's display is a set of boxes with arrows (for scrolling), and below that is a slide bar with a plus symbol [+] at the top and a minus symbol [-] at the bottom. By clicking on the plus symbol [+], you can magnify the view by a factor of two. By clicking on the minus symbol [-], you can pull out by a factor of two.
If you want to jump to a higher or lower zoom level faster, you can click directly on the hatch marks on the slide bar. If your mouse has a mouse wheel, you can also zoom in and out with it; unlike the slide bar, which zooms in and out from the cross hair at center of the screen, zooming with the mouse wheel is centered on your cursor. Double-clicking on the map only re-centers the map on that point, unlike Google's interface, where double-clicking zooms in.
Zoom Levels
Wikimapia follows Google's zoom system, which runs from zoom level 0, which is so far out that the world appears multiple times, to zoom level 23, which is so close one can make out individual tree leaves. The zoom level or zoom number is displayed in the url (the web address) at the top of your browser. For example, in this view of the city of Antalya in Turkey, your url should read http://www.wikimapia.org/#lat=36.8835339&lon=30.6899643&z=13&l=0&m=a. After the latitude and longitude numbers, the zoom level is given after z= (in this example, z=13).
Place polygons appear(glow yellow) on mouse-over, only if the zoom level is low enough to allow the entire polygon (rectangle in the old wikimapia) to fit in a full screen window, even if only a part of it is showing at the edge of the screen. So if a place does not glow on mouse-over, you might need to zoom-out.
Coordinates
Wikimapia's URL
Advanced users may occasionally find it useful to know how to decode the variables in Wikimapia's URL.
Primary URL
An example Wikimapia URL is http://wikimapia.org/#lat=53.9560855&lon=-1.9335937&z=3&l=0&m=a&v=2. The purpose of each of the variables is:
| Variable | Purpose |
|---|---|
| lat= | The latitude of the centre cross in decimal degrees |
| lon= | The longitude of the centre cross in decimal degrees |
| z= | The zoom level. The closest available tends to be the range z=14 to z=18 but there are exceptions such as the oceans or major cities. |
| l= | A numerical id for the language |
| m= | The map type: w=Wikimapia map, b=Satellite/Satellite + old places, m=Google map, h=Google hybrid, s=Google satellite, t=Google terrain), a= automatic (deprecated in beta). |
| v= | The option selected in the view menu: 0=All places, 1=No places, 2=All places, 3=User map, 5=Roads view (deprecated in beta), 4=Deleted places, 6=Roads edit (will not be activated just by linking). |
| search= | Some text to place in the search window (and search on). |
| show= | An internal document to be displayed. |
Note: In most cases, the URL includes the '#' sign. If this is the case and you only change something to the right of the #, you need to refresh the page after having made your modification and hitting enter. The '#' actually points to an "anchor" named like what follows it inside the page. Despite the fact that this anchor does not really exist, the browser "believes" that it has to stay at the same page.
Geotools URL
Take as an example: http://wikimapia.org/ #lat=-15.7747435&lon=-47.9143596&z=16&l=9&m=a&v=2&gz=0;-479177713;-157770563;29611;0;0;1033;0;58439
The parameters before "&gz=" are a regular Wikimapia URL as described above.
The parameters following "&gz=" are:
- type (0=distance measure; 1=area measure)
- longitude of origin point (the westernmost longitude of all your points)
- latitude of origin point (the southernmost latitude of all your points)
- degrees longitude between 1st point and origin
- degrees latitude between 1st point and origin
- degrees longitude between 2nd point and origin
- degrees latitude between 2nd point and origin
- degrees longitude between 3rd point and origin
- degrees latitude between 3rd point and origin
- etc.
Notes:
- The degree parameters should be read as if they have 7 decimal places. For example, 109899353 is really 10.9899353.
- The origin may not be a point in your geotools measurement list since its longitude and latitude may come from different points in your list. The reason for using this point as the origin may be so that all location offsets from it are guaranteed to be positive.
- The order of the position entries is different to the lat/long in the URL. This is probably because in a graph a position is usually indicated by (x,y), ie a horizontal (x) and vertical (y) pair.
Place URL
Places in Wikimapia have internal id numbers like an SSN, starting at 1. For instance, place #1 is a supermarket in a southern suburb of Moscow: http://wikimapia.org/1/Auchan-Kommunarka-hypermarket . You can also shorten this to just http://wikimapia.org/1/ if the title is not desired. Since no lat/long is provided in the URL, the page will show up with a small satellite image of the place in red and you can click on the red place to see the regular wiki page and the satellite image centered on that place and zoomed appropriately.
