The Maps API is incredibly flexible, allowing developers to venture beyond the basics of web mapping into very different ways of displaying geospatial data and imagery. One way we chose to highlight this flexibility was in the I/O session “Map Your Business, Inside and Out.”
In this session, we demonstrated techniques for displaying custom data over a map, starting with a selection of locations spread out over the world, then zooming in repeatedly, ending with placing a specific object within a room.
In the video you’ll see how features in the API can be used to organize and display custom data at different zoom and conceptual levels. We talked about a number of concepts, demonstrating the power and flexibility of the Maps API. These included:
Many of these techniques were used in the Google I/O 2011 Map. The source code for that project can be found on Google Project Hosting.
We hope that developers, armed with these techniques, can create compelling maps, enabling their users to navigate inside and outside the mapped locations.
Posted by Brendan Kenny and Chris Broadfoot, Geo Developer Relations Team
Caption: Labeled line between SFO and LAX airports. Download the KML.
Note: To preserve the current, unlabeled appearance of regular lines in existing KML files, we’ve turned off all line labels by default in Google Earth 6.1. Because labels for physical width lines were turned on by default in Earth 6.0, you will now need to explicitly enable in your LineStyles to display them in Earth 6.1+.
Street View mode uses a different field of view (FOV) than the regular navigation mode to provide users with a better experience. However, until now this special FOV was not captured while creating Tours in Google Earth. This meant that tour playback couldn’t faithfully reproduce the Street View experience as originally recorded.
To address this issue in Google Earth 6.1 we added the <gx:horizFov> tag to <Camera> and <LookAt>. These values are captured automatically while recording tours in Earth 6.1 but you can also add them directly to your KML.
Caption: Here’s an example of using <gx:horizfov> to create the classic dolly zoom effect, invented by cameraman Irmin Roberts and used in Alfred Hitchcock’s film Vertigo. Download the KML here.
Note: Although Cameras and LookAts can also be used to provide a default view for your placemarks, please note that in Google Earth 6.1 custom FOV values are only respected within the <gx:FlyTo> tags in tours.
We hope that these new features will help you create better tours and better annotate your data!
Posted by: Sean Askay, Developer Advocate & KML Tech Lead
When we launched the Google Maps API for Flash in May 2008 we were responding to strong demand from ActionScript developers for a way to integrate Google Maps into their applications and exploit the performance and cross-platform strengths of Flash.
However use of the Maps API for Flash remains a small percentage of overall Maps API traffic, with only a limited number of applications taking advantage of features unique to the Maps API for Flash. In addition, the performance and consistency of browser JavaScript implementations has progressed, making the JavaScript Maps API an increasingly suitable alternative.
Consequently we have decided to deprecate the Maps API for Flash in order to focus our attention on the JavaScript Maps API v3 going forward. This means that although Maps API for Flash applications will continue to function in accordance with the deprecation policy given in the Maps API Terms of Service, no new features will be developed, and only critical bugs, regressions, and security issues will be fixed. We will continue to provide support to existing Google Maps API Premier customers using the Maps API for Flash, but will wind down Developer Relations involvement in the Maps API for Flash forum.
We understand that this decision will be disappointing for Maps API for Flash developers. We hope you will consider migrating your applications to the Maps API v3, which offers many additional benefits such as Street View, Fusion Tables integration, Places search, and full support for mobile browsers. Our Developer Relations team and many skilled members of the JavaScript Maps API community are available to assist you in doing so on the Google Maps JavaScript API v3 forum.
Google remains supportive of Flash as a development platform for Rich Internet Applications for Chrome, Android, and other devices. However by consolidating our development on the Maps API v3 we can focus all of our resources on delivering great new Maps API features for the benefit of as many developers as possible.
Posted by Thor Mitchell, Product Manager, Google Maps API
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