axismaps / revolt

Jamaican Slave Revolt

Jamaican Slave Revolt

This animated thematic map narrates the spatial history of the greatest slave insurrection in the eighteenth century British Empire. It was a collaboration between Axis Maps and Vincent Brown at Harvard University.

Data

The data was collected in a spreadsheet which was loaded into MySQL and converted to JSON using make_revolt.php.

revolt.json contains all the attribute and spatial data used in the map. The animated marker paths are defined by LOC as an array of lat / lon arrays.

Code

The map is built on Leaflet. The animation is handled by AnimatedLine.js which is based on Leaflet.AnimatedMarker. Like AnimatedMarker, AnimatedLine breaks an input PolyLine into small segments, then over a specified interval "grows" the PolyLine by including each of those segments in sequence.

Installation

make install

revolt's Issues

Map bounds

When you zoom all the way out, it is really easy to lose the island. Maybe put some map bounds on there? And a max Zoom?

Question marks in descriptions

There are question marks in the sidebar description for October, 1760 (and elsewhere). Is this a bug or something in the original?

[iPad] - timeline should scroll on drag

Since holding the arrow doesn't work (aside from single clicks) due to the ipad's long-press being used by the OS, this would be a reasonable fix.

iPad - Timeline doesn't scroll

Timeline won't scroll at all on either swipe or press on the arrow.

Phone CSS

As far as I can tell, the map itself and all the components work alright on an Android phone. The CSS to handle the phone size needs to be redone (or done in the first place) though.

The sidebar will also have to be redesigned. Or popup on command somehow?

Months flicker on animation

Touch - Timeline doesn't work with touch

Timeline won't jump to date on touch.

iPad - doesn't really show where each location is

On the desktop, the map zooms out, pauses and then zooms back in to the new location. iPad doesn't do this - maybe because it is more demanding than the iPad can handle?

Sometimes the iPad can handle it, sometimes not. Might have to do with caching the tiles.

Some of the animations are really long

Could be perhaps speed up the animation for distances over a certain length?

June 28, 1760 geolocation

The second item on June 28th looks like it was geocoded to the actual Mesopotamia. Screws up the map a bit.

No space between text and citation

Should there be a space (or dash or something) between the text in the sidebar and it's citation? What about a different style of text for the citation?

Dot and line occasionally desync

On the desktop the line occasionally outpaces the dot.
On the iPad, the dot occasionally outpaces the line.

May 3, 1760 has no text

Shows as "undefined"

Timeline doesn't move to current date

Especially on limited screen estate, the timeline should always be showing the current date range.

Test issue

Testing the issue system

Map only pans to account for point

E.g. May through June, 1760 (4th point in May).

Map doesn't account for popup as well as the point.

Also has trouble fitting bounds correctly sometimes. E.g. (June 20, 1760 doesn't show the first point in the original bounds). This may be because the point is under the timeline, but still "on" the map.

iPad - Map Legend doesn't scroll

If the Map Legend ends up being too tall for the sidebar, you can't scroll down to see it.

Last item on June 22, 1760

Is the direction reversed? Or just a bad line?

Occasional no top label

Occasionally there is simply no top label for an event. (E.g. January, 1761 - 2nd item). Is this OK or should they all have at least something?