User:Iainhouse/scripts

Iain's Guide to User Scripts

There are a wealth of user scripts available for WME, created by users like you and me to enhance the process of editing the Waze map. This is a basic guide to some of the scripts I reckon are worth having.

I have given each script a 2-number score, ranging 1 to 3.

The first number is how useful the script is: 1 indicates that the script has limited usefulness, probably because it does a particularly specific job. 3 indicates a script you probably can't live without!

The second number indicates how complex the script is: 1 means it's simple & easy to use, up to 3 meaning you will take some time to learn how to use it, or all of it's features.

Data Visualisation

These scripts are mainly, or entirely, concerned with helping you to identify features of the map that might otherwise be missed. This is probably the most important script category and includes several essential scripts that every editor should be using

WME Colour Highlights (WMECH) 3/1

WMECH is one of the oldest scripts around and it's proven it's worth by the number of installs and it's longevity. What it does is simple enough: it adds coloured highlights to the map, allowing you to visualise information about segments and places, like lock level, missing names, restrictions, last editor, specific segment types etc. It also adds some useful highlights to places. Easy to use and difficult to live without. My "normal" segment highlights I have on all the time are: Locks, Alternate Name, No Name, One Way, Unknown Direction. For places, I keep both Locked Places and Incomplete Places on.

WME Toolbox 3/3

WME Toolbox also has a long history. It's gone through several incarnations and been worked on by many people. Currently it's developed and maintained by a team of editors. It provides a wealth of data highlights but also a large number of powerful tools, so it could equally sit in the Productivity heading as well.

Highlights I find useful are: non-ground elevations, over/under-locked segments, tunnels, restrictions, loops, simplifiable segments, u-turns, revcons, dead-end loops, soft turns. Worth special mention are the speed limits highlight and Turn Instruction Overrides.

Then there are the tools - a lot of them! Some are restricted to higher-level editors because of their potential to damage the map if used carelessly. Some that I use all the time are: measurement tool, copy segment data, simplify segments, clear geometry, cut segment, remove unneeded junctions, remove expired restrictions, split loops, clear revcons, clear u-turns.

There are powerful segment and place selection tools that allow you to select segments/places based on 30 different segment attributes or 18 place attributes. Having made your selection of segments, the attribute editor will then allow you to change a single attribute like City Name, without clearing all the Street Names.

This definitely goes on the "Essential" list.

WME Magic 3/2

I would class Magic as another essential tool for all editors. Magic is basically about finding and highlighting mistakes in the map that may need fixing. Not everything it highlights is definitely a problem, but its a powerful and valuable tool for improving the map quality. When you select a highlighted segment, it will also explain what the problem is and give a link to the relevant Wazeopedia page.

Problems that Magic can detect include things like missing speed limits, segments with no way in/out, segments that are very close to another segment but not connected, duplicated Google links and so on.

Although we can localise Magic for the UK to a large extent, it's worth remembering that, as a globally-used tool, it will never perfectly match UK standards.

WME Validator 3/3

Validator is cut from the same cloth as Magic. In fact it pre-dated Magic by quite a bit, but when the developer became inactive, Magic was built to replace it. But now the original developer is back, Validator is open-source and it's doing a good job again.

Validator highlights many of the same sort of issues as Magic, although you don't have the fine-grained control over which ones. A major place where Validator scores is it's ability to scan a large area, then produce a report of all the issues found in a web page with Permalinks. It also has some customisable highlights, although you may need some familiarity with regular expressions to use them!

Validator also has some localisation capability: you should install the UK Validator Localisation pack along with it.

UROverview Plus (URO+) 3/3

URO+ is another script that has been around for a very long time, and is an essential install for all editors. Originally (as the name suggests) it was designed to improve the handling of URs, but over time it has expanded to cover MPs, MCs, Places, Cameras and much more.

Almost any item on the map can have a pop-up added to show additional information when you hover over it. There are extensive filtering options to hide unwanted clutter and let you concentrate on one thing. UR and MP icons can be changed to indicate their type and show the number of comments. URs/MPs on top of each other can be automatically unstacked. There's a Camera Watch to see if someone edits a camera. The Next button on a URs/MPs can be disabled to prevent you accidentally jumping away from the current location with no way to get back.

Honestly - there are so many URO+ options, I don't know what a fair number of them do.

Junction Angle Info (JAI) 3/1

JAI is a very simple script to use - and so essential that we've repeatedly asked Waze to incorporate it into WME. It adds a colour-coded bubble to every turn arrow to show you what instruction will be given at that turn. Not sure if you're going to get a "keep left" or a "turn left"? JAI will remove that doubt forever.

WME Place Interface Enhancements (PIE) 3/2

WME PIE is a relatively young script, but it's already in my essential list. It adds a score of enhancements when editing places. There are tools to simplify/clear geometry, rotate, resize, orthogonalise, rotate area places. You can add buttons for categories, copy places, filter places. New places can automatically get their address from the closest segment. Place names can be shown on the map. The segment that will be navigated to can be shown. Particularly useful is highlighting of places linked to Google results that are closed, or a long way away.

WME Map Tiles Update

A simple, but useful tool. It pulls data from the Waze Status page to give you information about when the last map updates were made. You can see the information as a pop-up if you hover over the icon, but it will pop up automatically when an update has been done since the last time you opened WME.

Productivity Tools

These scripts are mainly designed to make map editing easier, by saving clicks, adding tools or enhancing the WME user interface

WME OpenData (WMEOD) 3/1

This is a UK-only script and is absolutely essential for all UK editors. The Ordnance Survey publish a lot of data through the OS OpenData program - and this data includes the location of every named street segment in the UK (at least as far as their data is up-to-date). If you've recently started editing, you've probably got tired of typing in street & city names; making mistakes; copy/pasting. WMEOD means that you will never have to type 95% of city names!

WMEOD will determine the street names closest to the segment you have selected. Clicking on a name will show a bounding box for that OS data and, when you have the right name, one click will apply the name to the Waze segment.

WMEOD also provides links to open the Ordnance Survey map, Roadworks.org, the London Roadworks maps at the same location you have open in WME.

UR-MP Tracking 3/2

If you're just doing the odd edit around your drives, this won't help you much, but if you're an Area Manager looking after a large area (or the whole country), then not using this script practically counts as irresponsibility.

This script will scan a large area (your editable area, a whole country or any area of your choice) and get the details of all URs, MPs, MCs and PURs in that area. It will then present the data in tables where you can filter and sort them, with every line including a link to jump to the item without reloading the page.

Want to find all URs older than 60 days that have not had a comment on them? Find all URs you have commented on? All road closure MPs sorted by age? All PURs containing the word "home" within 50 miles of your current location? This script can do all of that. There is simply no better way to manage URs/MPs/MCs/PURs.

WME FixUI 2/1

OK - I'm biased about this script. I wrote it. It's been my firm opinion for a long time that the devs who make WME don't use it much, almost never use it much on small screens and care far more about how it looks than how easy it is to use. They also seem to be infected by the current fashion in UR design that likes flat buttons, large pretty icons and minimal contrast. As I sit at home working on my old 1400x900 personal laptop, I want all the map space I can get and I don't want to be straining my eyes at 1am. And there are plenty of people trying to work on older equipment with smaller screens.

So WME FixUI is concerned with modifying the WME UI. It aims to reduce the size of the over-large controls to maximise map area, whilst improving contrast to help our eyes. It also adds/changes map controls that have been damaged or removed by Waze, as well as adding a couple of new functions.

Pretty much all of the options can be turned off/on or (in the case of compression/contrast) set to different levels. At it's most extreme, WME FixUI will make WME usable on screens heading towards 1000 pixels width, but I hope it has something to offer anyone who would like some improvement in the UI.

WME RA Util 3/1

Another essential script - at least it is for the UK, where we have a lot of roundabouts! This script is only about roundabouts, but it does everything with them you could possibly want.

Before this script, the quickest way to deal with an unsatisfactory roundabout was to delete and re-draw it, losing speed data and automatic locks. Now you can move, rotate, enlarge/shrink existing roundabouts - and once you have it where you want it, you can shuffle connection points around the edge of it.

WME ClickSaver 2/1

This script does what the name suggests - and the principle is so useful that Waze have already "stolen" some of the ideas for WME!

ClickSaver's aim is to reduce the number of clicks you need to perform actions. The LH panel when editing segments is full of dropdown menus: 1 click to open, another click to select. CS will add one-click buttons to accomplish most of the same functions. One click for segment type, routing preference, elevation. Direction and Lock Level used to be dropdowns until WME copied CS. There are also a couple of one-click enhancements for Parking places.

WME SpeedHelper 2/1

Simply; ClickSaver for speed limits. No more clicking in the SL box to type a number, or spinning through the values. SpeedHelper adds buttons formatted as speed limit signs for one-click setting of speed limits on segments - plus a button to clear the speeds from a segment.

WME Route Checker 2/1

A useful script for diagnosing routing problems. Select 2 segments: the script will then scrape a route between the 2 from the Livemap and display that route in WME, including turn instructions.

WME Bookmarks 2/1

This is very useful if there are places you want to go back & check on, or you spot a problem "in passing" and want to deal with it later. I used to keep a whole folder full of Chrome bookmarks for WME locations, but this is a lot easier. Add a text note to the bookmark, automatic naming for the nearest city and jump to Bookmarks without a page reload.

WME Advanced Closures 2/3

Ever been faced with 4 weeks of overnight closures, Monday to Friday but not weekends? Imagine doing 20 separate closures. Now imagine doing another 20 for the opposite carriageway. When you've decided it's too much work, install this script! It takes a bit of getting used to the interface, but there's no better tool for creating multiple closures.

WME Image Overlays 1/1

This does one job, but does it very well. Sometimes you have to draw in a new housing estate, but all you have to go on is a site plan on the developer's website. This script will let you load up an image and position it on the map: resize, rotate and move the image until it's in exactly the right place, then attach it to the map. Now you can just fill in the missing roads directly from the image.

NB. This is the only tool that a Waze member of staff has (a) admitted to using and (b) actually asked for a new feature! Gil from the Beacons project uses it to load official tunnel blueprints into WME so he can adjust the Waze segments to match the real situation underground.

Waze Edit Count Monitor (WECM) 2/1

We get points when we edit the map. Some people think that making a better map is it's own reward - I certainly do, but I don't see any reason why I shouldn't get the points as well! Plus, my edit count is my own measure of how much work I've done. But some people only care about the points. As a result, there is cheating and a consequence of that is throttling.

WECM scrapes your edit count from your profile page and puts it in a button on the toolbar, so you can spot when you're being throttled and take a break or do something different.

WME BeenThere 2/1

If you've ever tried to work methodically through a large area, you'll know it's quite difficult to keep track of where you've been. Zoom in to look at a problem and you lose track of where you were before. This script allows you to place polygons onto the map to mark areas and keep track of where you've been.

WME Chat Addon 2/2

WME Geometries

WME Client Tile Borders

WME Enhanced Search