Customer Reviews

Map Scripting 101: An Example-Driven Guide to Building Interactive Maps with Bing, Yahoo!, and Google Maps

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've gone over different aspects of this book a few times now, and was really looking forward to it showing a few things with ease, that I was looking to complete for a site I'm working on. Needless to say, I'm rather disappointed with the code issues within the book. I've compared the code in the book itself to the code on both the books website and the code on the Mapstraction website, and it varies much from both. So much so that it doesn't even work correctly...I believe that it's partially due to the lack of clarity on the Mapstraction website. The book does excel in describing techniques used for map scripting without a reliance on any one particular service, but after the issues described above, I feel that sticking to one service (such as google maps) would make your life a lot easier.

Pros
- Good read for basic concepts
- Easy to read and understand

Cons
- Flawed code and examples
- Book site code doesn't always match books code
(site code appears to be outdated! How this is possible I don't know)

This book couldn't have come at a better time: everything to do with mapping and location awareness is just hitting the mainstream, from NASA cartography to geotagged tweets. If you want practical tools for putting this enormous flood of data to use on the web, this is by far the best starting point, and an excellent reference guide to boot.

Honestly, when I first opened it, I wasn't that interested. I'm a web guy with a chronic interest in mapping, and I figured anything with "101" in the title was beneath me. But after a few chapters to bring beginners up to speed, it was introducing stuff I'd never thought of, and by the end there are ideas that you could easily turn into the basis for a major site. That's pretty amazing for a book that assumes no previous knowledge of the topic.

(In fact, now that I think about it, if someone told me they didn't know where to get started with web development, I would point them to this book among others. The practical projects would make it much more rewarding than the usual "now let's turn the <div> blue"-type JavaScript guides.)

It's also just plain fun to read. DuVander's writing style is warm and engaging without talking down to the reader, and most of the example projects are interesting in themselves, even if you're only using them as exercises.

If you want to work with maps on the web, this is easily the best all-around resource.

I know enough about the web to not call it the "Internets," but beyond that I know next to nothing about programming, coding, Java... the list goes on. I began reading this book after struggling to set up my first website and I think that DuVander has done something that I didn't know was possible: he's created an approachable guide to creating complex online maps for readers of any experience level--even me.

The hardest thing for someone like me to do was crack open the book. Once I had, the author captured me with his conversational style. He's written Map Scripting 101 almost like a workbook: you learn through doing something small, then adding a bit more to it, and a bit more... and before long, you have mastered something surprising in its complexity. And maybe most surprising at all: none of it was the least bit painful.

Recommended.

This book is very accessible and useful to beginners and advanced programmers looking to incorporate useful maps into their sites. It is easy to follow with clear examples. The author writes authoritatively on the topic but in a simple, approachable style. He is able to maintain that approach with the more advanced map projects. If you are looking to build interactive maps for your site, this book is not only required reading, it is also a pleasure to read.

I have read several books on web development over the past few years. This is the first one I actually enjoyed reading. In so many books (even the ones written for beginners), it's easy to get lost. This is the first one I did not throw across the room in frustration.

The companion site is a nice, convenient supplement to the book. And I wish I had the JavaScript quick start guide when I was starting to learn it.

Maps are endlessly fascinating. They provide a sense of potential, pushing new horizons, extending old frontiers, as well as helping one find the nearest Starbucks. This book provides a great introduction to the art of accessing maps from a web site. And more than accessing them, customizing them for any number of uses.

While this book is listed as a 101 book, it contains techniques that go well beyond a newbie's interest. The warm, clear and engaging prose from the author invites one to dig in. What you may have thought was over your head turns out to be doable with the right tools.

It has many examples, and contains keys to using maps from Bing, Google, and Yahoo. It is rich with examples of map usage from each of these sources. As the title suggests, the key to using maps is understanding how to write a script that optimizes a particular map for your needs. There is even an appendix that provides an introduction to JavaScript, the main scripting language used on the web and the language used in the example scripts.

If you have an interest in adding any type of location information to a web site, this book is a must have. If you would just like to know how to do it, this book will guide you to answers, and might even hook you into writing code for your own site. Highly Recommended!

I'm not much of a programmer (I dabble... but I'm by no means good at it). I've been interested in Map Scripting for a while because I have a friend who does map scripty things a lot, and he recommended I get this book. I've only gotten a little ways through it, but I think the best part of this book is that it keeps things simple and doesn't overcomplicate. So many other books like this forget that beginners don't know what the author knows, and just ends up spewing out abstract knowledge that you can't get (then you get stuck). Map Scripting 101 does a good job avoiding this, and I don't feel confused as I read through. Definitely looking forward to becoming a Map Scripting guru myself, now :)

Among other things, I'm a GIS analyst with the desire and need to communicate geospatial data via the Web. I've looked into a number of different systems that I could use on my website. With only a little bit of adjustment, the methods described in this manual had me up and running in a matter of hours. I haven't explored everything that this book offers but I will. As a programmer with "archived" web development skills in JavaScript, &c. (my first language was FORTRAN IV -- also archived), I was able to bring a lot of code back to the surface of my memory by using the examples in this manual.

I loved the book. Easy to read, easy to follow, easy to learn. I have almost twenty years of development experience and needed to learn map scripting; but the book didn't insult my geeky intelligence. On the other hand a web designer co-worker didn't feel overwhelmed by the techie stuff (don't know how it can be done - but the author did it).

So, why only four stars? Because I have a problem with the basic premise of the book - that additional level of abstraction (mapstraction library) has benefits and worth learning, as opposed to developing straight in Google, Yahoo, or Bing. In my twenty year experience I saw cross-platform zApp libraries; cross-GUI Zinc library, and many others. Unless you are a software developer that is building a toolkit and need to support your customers' choice of map libraries - *you* can choose one and develop there. Debugging is simpler, and help in forums is much more abundant!

Anyway, this is obviously not a place to discuss costs vs. benefits of mapstraction. If you are sold - this is the best book you can think of. Otherwise, still read it for general education, but then dive into APIs of your provider of choice!

MAP SCRIPTING 101 offers over seventy useful script examples that show readers how to create interactive maps and mashups, using different tools from Twitter's friend-finder to a real-time weather map. Create, embed and use basic maps by setting boundaries and levels, use filter location markers, and customize maps for visitors in this key to using Google Earth's KML and other popular online mapping programs. A unique, useful and highly recommended guide!

At first I was excited about mapstraction, the OpenSource javascript front end for using google, yahoo, and other map providers. The book is well written and fun. But why would you want access to multiple map providers? Why not just use one provider's API directly? The code is very similar.
And I needed a way to show areas on a map with different shades of color. The author has an example of this, shading four southwestern states different colors, but he doesn't show all of the necessary code in the book, and when you look it up on his web site you discover it is for an older version of google's API. It won't work with google's V3. No mention of this in the book or on the web site.
The book is dedicated to Mapstraction. But that is a free OpenSource product that is not keeping up with the industry's changes. Also, you should be aware of the fact that many users' browsers will balk at such an unsigned object. I couldn't get Mapstraction pages to work at my local library, nor on a friend's pc. But pages that access google's API directly work fine (see mkalliophoto.com/welcomes.php).
The book touts Mapstraction for its ability to access any map provider's API, but the only examples are for google and yahoo, and mostly just for google. Why do you need this? Are you going to provide a button for a user to switch between a google map and a yahoo map and a bing map? I will tell you right now it will be difficult to tell the difference. Even if you were to do this, it would be easy to do it just with their API's. And then it would actually work.