A List Apart: Articles: Take Control of Your Maps - 0 views
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Frederik Van Zande on 08 Apr 08We live in the era of Google Maps. What started off as an impressive refresh of Mapquest-style maps now fuels web mashups. With APIs official and unofficial, Google Maps is simple enough for front-end designers to embed and for back-end programmers to target. Along the way to becoming nearly ubiquitous, it has played a major role in the "democratization of mapping." For the practical developer who wants to add geospatial information to a site or application, the Google Maps API has been an easy call. But, perhaps no longer. As websites mature and the demand for geographic applications grow, the old mashup arrangement is starting to chafe. Mapping components are more and more vital, and so we demand greater control, expressiveness, and functionality from them. Fortunately, as in many aspects of internet technology, an ecology of open source online mapping tools has emerged alongside the market leader. It is now possible to replicate Google Maps' functionality with open source software and produce high-quality mapping applications tailored to our design goals. The question becomes, then, how?
