Tagzania and other maps

We’re working hard to improve the new version of the site. Some bug repairing and optimization is taking place these days. Thanks for your feedback and stay tuned as new features are coming.

But we just wanted to advance and present you a little hack in Tagzania.

Tagzania uses Mapstraction

In most of Tagzania’s maps, we don’t use the Google Maps API directly. We’re using an intermediate smart library called Mapstraction.

From their website:

Mapstraction is a library that provides a common API for various javascript mapping APIs to enable switching from one to another as smoothly as possible. Developers can code their applications once, and then easily switch mapping provider based on project needs, terms and conditions, and new functionality.

It’s a cool tool. Thanks to Mapstraction, we can plug any mapping service into Tagzania. Now you can see your Tagzania places with Yahoo, Microsoft, or even OpenStreetMap maps.

For now, you can test it just adding a parameter at the end of your URL in Tagzania, and you will get the requested map layer. For instance:

So, if some of the mapping services has better coverage in your area, you can hack the Tagzania URL, just adding ?map=yahoo or ?map=microsoft or ?map=openstreetmap . For example, see the Forbidden City in Beijing mapped in OpenStreetMap.

You will need to hack the URLs to access this feature for now, but we are thinking about how to implement it so that it can be used by any user, maybe depending on user preferences, or a combo box somewhere, or depending on the place editors choice or… What do you think about it?

Tags: mapstraction, openstreetmap

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 4th, 2008 at 1:14 pm and is filed under mapstraction, openstreetmap, tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Tagzania and other maps”

Mapapel, print your city map | Tagzania Services Says:
July 7th, 2009 at 5:26 pm
[...] using OpenStreetMap as data source. You might remember we already use OpenStreetMap data in Tagzania.com thanks to Mapstraction. Tagzania Services is working together with La Personnalite in Mapapel; they’ve designed the [...]
See your places in OpenStreetMap | Tagzania Blog Says:
November 26th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
[...] doesn’t want to deal with just one provider, that’s why we use Mapstraction, and specially OpenStreetMap. Until today, you had to add a new parameter to the URL to see your [...]

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