By: Tristen Brown
In the last Studio release announcement we mentioned that we’ve been doing a lot of user research to improve Studio. Today we’re releasing an update that revisits core style editor interactions to make designing maps easier and faster. Here are the highlights:
A new layout for editing complex values
The previous version of the style editor had a lot of complexity inside contextual popovers. We’ve done away with the popovers to offer more room for fine-tuning properties like color and line width directly in the editing pane. With the new layout, it’s straightforward to transform a property from a literal value to a zoom or data-driven value.
When selecting multiple layers in your style that use different values, the editor makes it clear how to apply a shared value across all selected layers:
Documentation about individual properties is now readily available from the property form:
The editing pane paves the way for upcoming advanced features like expressions. Look out for expressions in an upcoming Studio release.
A new way to navigate your layers
Map styles are complex systems of interrelated but distinct layers. Selecting more than one layer at a time to adjust relationships across your style is a common way of working in the editor. We received a lot of feedback that users wanted more ways to select layers that related to one another so they could work on their styles more systematically.
Making batch changes by property or value had existed for some time in Studio from a dedicated properties pane. The pane was detached from the usual editing flow, and many users found it confusing.
Faceted layer filtering serves a similar purpose to the properties pane, allowing users to select related layers and adjust them all at the same time. There’s a myriad of different ways to filter the style to find related layers:
New font & image workflows
Until now, users had a hard time knowing where to go to add fonts and images. You can now manage your assets directly from the toolbar. Here’s how you add an image to your style:
And here’s what that workflow looks like for fonts:
Language coverage is an important reference based on the font(s) you have chosen for a layer. It remains under the editing pane. Find it under the globe icon:
Try Studio and send us your feedback
Incorporating user feedback into the development process of Studio has been critical for us. We always want to hear from you! Try out the new Studio and reach out to the Studio team by mentioning @mapbox on Twitter. As always, share what you’re working on by using the #BuiltWithMapbox hashtag.
It’s now easier to style maps in Studio was originally published in Points of interest on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.