[Openstreetmap-dev] Experiments with AJAX
nick at hogweed.org
nick at hogweed.org
Sat Aug 13 22:04:14 BST 2005
Done a bit of experimenting with AJAX and it seems the following should be
possible:
1. Draw a polygon (wood, lake, urban area etc) by sketching round its outline
with the mouse. The polygon outline can then be sent to the database and
stored via XMLHttpRequest.
2. This will be particularly relevant for Freemap, but might be relevant for
other projects too: annotate a map with icons to represent hazards such as
mad cows, floods, giant hogweeds (do a Google search), etc. The user could
click the map and add a description of the hazard which can then be put in
the database. The map would then include that hazard.
3. Roll over an icon e.g. a pub and display information about it as a
"tooltip", rather like Google does.
Features which will be difficult:
1. Google-style scrolling maps. Only likely to be feasible if the maps are
purely static rather than being dynamically created from a database; this
would need, say, nightly regeneration of maps, and storage of proportions
which probably only someone like Google could manage, not your average
hosting provider.
2. "Live" drawing on the map e.g. sketching a route as you move the mouse
along it. Should be possible in SVG though.
Will continue to try stuff out with freemap and update if I come up with
anything interesting. If anyone is interested in following this I can give
you a login on Freemap to try it out.
Nick
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