2009/01/06

Text markers and static maps with GoogleMaps plugin

I've finished the coding of the new 2.1 version of the GoogleMaps plugin, the main highlights for this new version are:

Text markers.

You can add your text on the map, aimed at providing an always visible caption for the details that you want to remark.

The title field of normal markers now it's shown as a text besides the marker, and you can add any other text in the map using the Text tool.

This feature is based on the ELabels script provided by Mike Williams, I have simplify it a little to remove unwanted features and decrease its size.

Static images generation.

Ok, the previous version did generate a static image and then loaded the map, but this version does provide an option to not generate any script at all, and most important: it's able to edit again those images.

In the previous versions you were able to copy the image around or manually remove the script from source code, but if you tried to edit it again, it didn't recognize any of its data, so it wasn't very useful. Now it can generate the image without any scripts and then recover all the data that it's used on that image (I mean: data as text labels, areas, kml overlays... won't be recovered because they aren't used in the static maps).

This can be useful if you want to provide the option in a kind of forum where anybody can create data, but you don't want them to use any script due to obvious security reasons.

The scripts now are precompressed using YUICompressor in order to improve loading time, if you want to use the original files in order to make any adjustment or debug anything you just have to rename the files.

Now I need to update the docs and then it will be send to the current users. If you want the script and until I set up an automated system you can mail me at amla70 at gmail dot com and I'll provide you the PayPal info.

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