Last week at Google Developer Day 2010 in Sao Paulo, Brazil we launched support for Styled Maps in the Static Maps API. This comes on the heels of our launch of Styled Maps in the Maps API for Flash two weeks ago and now means that developers can use Styled Maps in the Maps JavaScript API, the Maps API for Flash and the Static Maps API. The Static Maps API is useful for those who want to display a map in a browser where Javascript or Flash isn’t supported or to create a lightweight thumbnail map.
To use it simply specify one or more “style” parameters in your query string, like this:
style=feature:featureArgument|element:elementArgument|rule1:rule1Argument|rule2:rule2Argument
Here’s an example creating a Halloween themed static map of Sao Paulo:
http://maps.google.com/maps/api/staticmap?sensor=false&size=500x300&zoom=9¢er=Sao+Paulo+Brazil&style=feature:water|saturation:100|hue:0xff5e00|gamma:0.58&style=feature:landscape|invert_lightness:true&style=element:labels|visibility:off&style=feature:poi|hue:0x0800ff|ligtness:-70&style=feature:administrative|element:geometry|visibility:off
Google Developer Days and DevFests are a chance to learn about Google’s developer products and meet the engineers who work on them. With GDD Brazil finished, I attended DevFest Argentina to give presentations on the Maps APIs, Earth API, KML and Fusion Tables. Following that we’ll have events in Munich, Moscow and Prague. Hope to see you on the (now more styled) road.
Posted by Ossama Alami, Google Geo Developer Relations
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