52 Web Cartography: Map Design for Interactive and Mobile Devices
Web map legends often fall short of their sole reason for existence in one of
two ways. They either fail to include enough information for a map user to
make sense of what the user is looking at or they include far too many irrel-
evant interactive options that distract the map user from paying attention to
the information found on the map.
How to Avoid Creating Ineffective Web Map Legends
First things rst: design with a purpose. All you need to do to design effec-
tive Web map legends is follow three simple steps. First, decide what your
legend needs to show—not what it could show (e.g., water is blue), not what
it might show (e.g., every map symbol found in a national map da