It’s fair to say we’ve been a bit busy recently. We’ve been working away on the long-awaited new version of Parish Online. And it's ready for you now!
With over 1,100 subscribers, Parish Online has become a vital tool to support the efficient management of a Local Council. Parish Online is recommended by the National Association of Local Councils (NALC). For the last two years we have been working on a major software upgrade to make Parish Online faster, more secure, more versatile and easier to use.
The redesign of Parish Online is based on feedback from existing subscribers as well as the latest trends in web software architecture and web design. What you, the users, asked for was more speed and functionality, but without losing the ’easy-to-use’ character of the system.
The upgrade has involved changing every single line of code, so that even functions that look identical are in fact new. This was essential to achieve the speed and power that is now available using modern programming languages. Parish Online is in fact now just one version of a ‘base system’ we have called XMAP. Other versions of XMAP will over time include systems to support other users such as Districts, Counties, National Parks, Central Government Departments and Commercial customers both in UK and overseas. The main features of the new Parish Online are:
User Interface
As you can see, we’ve kept the layout of Parish Online largely the same. You select Map Layers from the left-hand sidebar and access the tools from the top menu, just as normal. There are fewer buttons on the left-hand sidebar as we’ve made the map easier to navigate using the scroll wheel on your mouse or a pinch-to-zoom action using a trackpad or touchscreen. For more changes to the user interface, see our detailed User Guide.
Increased Speed
The new Parish Online is much faster. The initial loading speed is on average 40% faster. Switching on base maps and new layers on is average 65% faster. In addition, you no longer have hit the ‘Apply’ button to load new layers. Layers now load as you request them and as you pan the map.
Functionality Improvements
The new Parish Online has a number of significant improvements in functionality. The main ones are:
- a new Styling tool which gives you much more control of your layer styles
- an improved List View
- Layer ordering
- a Data Extract tool that now works with existing polygons (such as your parish boundary, for example).
A full list of improvements is provided in our Guide. We will also be adding even more new features over the coming few months, so please let us know what you would like to see.
Thank you all for waiting patiently for this new version of Parish Online. We hope it allows you to do bigger and better things with digital mapping.