Google Maps Platform: Fab Friday Upgrades

Maps Platform

Product updates, customer stories, and tips and tricks on Google Maps Platform

Next Thursday, at 6:30pm Pacific Time, Thor Mitchell, Product Manager for the Google Maps API, will be sitting down with myself and Chris Broadfoot for a Google Maps API Office Hours on Google Plus. Thor will be discussing and taking your questions on a variety of subjects, but one of them in particular is upgrading from Google Maps API V2 to V3.

A little over two years ago, we announced that the V2 API was deprecated and V3 was the new production version. The three year deprecation period will be up next May, and the three of us will discuss ways in which developers can move their remaining V2 applications to V3. We’re even starting a new hashtag, #GoV3.

To watch the office hours live, check out our Google+ Page post. As always, the video will be posted to Google+ and YouTube later.

In other news, I stumbled on a couple of open source libraries that might be fun to incorporate into Google Maps API applications.

The first is chronoline.js, which is a library for making a chronology timeline out of events on a horizontal timescale. It doesn’t have a specific mapping function but would be good for creating time based mapping apps.

The second is also not a mapping app, but allows you to use gamepad controllers in JavaScript. I haven’t tried Gamepad.js, but it looks pretty cool. I’d say it would be particularly useful with the Google Earth API, but might have applications in Street View and Maps as well.

Posted by Mano Marks, Google Maps Developer Relations Team