A new, real full-screen icon for openlayers.org

Fig. 1: About the (very good!) Swiss Geoportal I came on this icon (1). I thought it was a slider icon. But this was not so.

Usability: confounding icon Full-screen and icon Slider

Fig. 1 fullscreen_icon_geoportal.jpg

It means „switch to full-screen mode“. Confusing. With small variations, the full-screen icon is a fairly well-established element. See the examples below.

Google search results for full-screen icon

Fig. 2 fullscreenicon.jpg

So I tweeted to Geoportal and alerted about this usability detail. The answer was, that this is defined by the use of the OpenLayers API.

The developers of OpenLayers have turned into the Twitter discussion and initiated a change request within a few minutes (Change fullscreen icon #4445) github.com/openlayers/ol3/issues/4445.

OpenLayers used Character Icons (That’s another discussion!). So, this is the easiest solution:

fullscreen character icons

Fig. 3 character-arrow2.jpg

- var label = options.label ? options.label : '\u2194';
+ var label = options.label ? options.label : '\u2922';

I am happy that I could help openlayers.org to improve the usability of their product.

The devil is in the detail!