Viewing task properties on the map pans the map away from the feature

When you preview a task that represents a feature with many properties, clicking the feature on the map opens a callout bubble and automatically pans the map to fit the callout. Then when you click the Edit button, iD is centered wherever the preview page’s map is currently centered, not where the feature is located, but iD doesn’t show the original feature’s location anymore.

I’ve seen multiple mappers get confused because of the offset. For example, if the point feature was supposed to be on the rooftop of a particular building, but now the map is centered on a different building, the mapper has to manually eyeball the correct building’s location by switching browser tabs. As a workaround, I tell them to click Edit before clicking on the feature to show the callout, or to pan back to the feature before clicking Edit. Actually, my personal workaround is to enable to Task Properties widget and never click on the feature on the map.

I guess it can be useful to open the editor to the current map center, especially for a large non-point feature that the user needs to zoom in on. But maybe there’s a way to meet the user’s expectations in both cases:

• If opening the callout automatically pans the map, then closing the callout should automatically pan the map back to where it was.
• Ideally, the feature would be highlighted in a custom data overlay in iD, so the user doesn’t have to eyeball the center of map even without this panning issue.

Reproduce the issue from the preview page map by selecting a feature with many properties, opening its callout, and clicking Edit. Trace the callout’s automatic panning and the Edit transition into iD, then verify that editing keeps the original feature location available without breaking the expected behavior for larger features.