OpenStreetMap launches new map editor

The new editor works in any HMTL5 capable browser without special plugins

The OpenStreetMap (OSM) project has announced that it will make its new map editor, which it had originally unveiled in February, available to all its contributors today. Development on the new iD editor was partly funded by a grant from the Knight Foundation and unlike the software it replaces, the new editor does not require Flash to run. The tool is written completely in HTML5 and uses the D3 visualisation library.

The OpenStreetMap Foundation hopes that the new tool will further enlarge the number of contributors of the crowd-sourced mapping service. To coincide with the introduction of the new editor, the Foundation has also launched a funding appeal to raise money for new hardware for its infrastructure. Donations will go towards a new server that should "greatly increase the reliability and performance of OSM’s website and editing service", said the Foundation. The target for the fundraising campaign is set at £40,000 and technical information about the hardware that the OSM project wants to acquire is available on the project's wiki.

At the time of writing, the new iD editor was not available on the main OpenStreetMap web site yet but users can start using version 1.0.0 of iD to edit the OSM data set through the ideditor.com site. Source code for the editor is available on its GitHub repository and is published under the WTFPL licence.

(fab)