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Tell Us About Your Experience With Modest Maps
If you're using Modest Maps then we'd love to hear about it. Please provide a link and let us know about your project!
We'd also like to hear about how the library is working for you, or not. What was easy, what was hard, what limitations did you overcome. Was anything missing? Is there a short tutorial we (or you) could write that would help the next person?
We are interested in providing better examples in future releases. If you're willing to have your code included in the source repository (under a suitable license) for others to learn from, please let us know.
(If you have a specific bug report or feature request, please feel free start a new thread and keep this one for talking about projects.)
We'd also like to hear about how the library is working for you, or not. What was easy, what was hard, what limitations did you overcome. Was anything missing? Is there a short tutorial we (or you) could write that would help the next person?
We are interested in providing better examples in future releases. If you're willing to have your code included in the source repository (under a suitable license) for others to learn from, please let us know.
(If you have a specific bug report or feature request, please feel free start a new thread and keep this one for talking about projects.)
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Inappropriate?Hi guys!
Modest Map is excellent project, thank you for your job.
I use it in my Flash application Matter Of Time http://maraboutime.com
I created my own world map - "fancy" version of NASA Blue Marble project.
It's 65536x32768 pixels Linear Projection. I use your tile engine (as2) with small modifications.
The Matter of Time represents satellite map of the Word with sunclock map, that shows in real time what part of the World is in daylight and what part is in darkness. You can see the current time for more then 7000 places in the World along with the current temperature. For Unites States you can also see weather forecast (I use two different weather webservices). Local time adjusted for daylight savings time.
It can be set up as ActiveDesktop (on Windows XP only. Vista doesn't support ActiveDesktop).
The only problem I have is the lost of some tiles - this happens sometime and this problem was mentioned here by rjcarr.It would be great to have some fix. Except that everything works fine.
Thank you for your great tool!
Sergiy Dagayev (support@maraboutime.com)
By the way, currently I'm looking for a job on Long Island or NYC :-) -
Inappropriate?Thanks Sergiy, that looks really fun.
There are lots of nice touches here: the coordinate grid is cool, the little nagging-plane is cute, the tiles are very attractive, and I love the splash when you zoom in! :)
Sadly we're not using the as2 version very much ourselves, so I'm not sure how to fix the problem with missing tiles. If you ever find out what causes it, please let us know.
People of Long Island or NYC, hire this guy!
I’m happy
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Inappropriate?We have used ModestMaps in our AS3 research project, which you can see on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MJ8jK...
The particular advantage of ModestMaps is the ability to use a variety of mapping providers, and this distinguishes it from the Yahoo! and Google components. Many of our customers have existing GIS/map providers so we would need to use theirs, and I can see how this would be possible with ModestMaps.
In terms of improvements, I am using the component in a Flex project and the Flex aspects of the component are less well developed, including the creation policy that I have commented on before. I have had to put in a number of annoying work arounds for this. In future I would be interested in polyline and polygon markers. Knowing about the visibility of markers would be a good thing, there's no built-in way to do this.
As far as I am aware, the code hasn't been updated in some while, despite reports of, and patches for, some serious bugs (I'm thinking of the problem with the clipping/mouse interaction that keeps coming up on the forums, and the memory leak). I wonder whether ModestMaps should be moved to an Open Source Development model? Yes it's already open source but community contributed changes are not included in the source. -
Inappropriate?Hi Richard,
Thanks for your feedback and project link!
I'm sorry if you get the perception that the code isn't being updated or that we don't include community changes - both things are not true.
Active development on Modest Maps is happening, but in a branch so it doesn't break existing code. I concede that we don't apply patches to trunk often enough, and also it's true that the flex component is somewhat neglected.
We have granted several people commit rights to subversion in the past, and applied several fixes contributed via this forum (with credit). If there are fixes you think we've missed (not bugs we don't know how to fix) then let us know.
Also, if you would like to contribute your 'annoying fixes' :) then please drop us an email (tom, mike, shawn [at] stamen.com) with the code or a patch you'd like to contribute and we'll apply it or add you to subversion if it makes more sense.
If there's a successful open source model you can point to as an example of managing committers to an active project, I'd be happy to take a look and see if it makes sense for us.
I’m anxious
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Inappropriate?I've tried 2 mapping systems: Worldkit and modestmaps. Worldkit seems to have a bit more polish in it's basic state (out of the box), but modestmaps seems to have more potential. Worldkit is AS2 only, so it doesn't work in flex.
My only complaint with MM (so far):
The MM website has a tutorial called ACTransit, to show how to use homemade zoomify imagetiles. However this tutorial doesn't work with the AS3 trunk. The AS3 trunk lacks a critical file, "AbstractZoomifyMapProvider.as", as well as the casaframework which is also used. I eventually figured out how to build my own mapprovider, by studying and modifying the bluemarble provider. -
Inappropriate?Thanks for your feedback Michael. The AbstractZoomifyMapProvider has been ported to as3 for an upcoming release (which adventurous people can find in the 'tom-tweenlite' branch of our subversion repository).
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Inappropriate?Thanks. Since I'm a complete AS3 noobie, I'm scared of the unreleased branches. .
I’m silly
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Inappropriate?We appreciate that :) We'll be pushing out a new release with documentation and examples soon.
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Inappropriate?I looked into using ModestMaps for a project that I'm starting and I got great feedback from the admins on this forum, so a huge thanks for that!
I've recently been looking at the somewhat new flash api for google maps and since I had previous experience with the js api it makes an easy transition. My thoughts are (relevant to modest maps):
1) Con: The Google API for flash is more polished and the algorithms seem faster with less errors (nothing to be ashamed of, it is google after all)
2) Pro: The Google API is closed and the MM API is open.
3) Con: I had to make quite a few changes to the MM code to make it work for me. This makes me nervous about handling future upgrades.
So, at this point, I think I'm leaning towards using google maps, but if you need the flexibility of other map providers, or just like the openness of MM, it is highly recommended. -
Inappropriate?Thanks for your feedback rjcarr.
Have you thought about contributing your changes back to the Modest Maps code-base to ease your future upgrade worries?
I believe it's possible to do lots of things with the Modest Maps code that can't be done in Google Maps. Top of my list is View Source and fix problems, but another one is create a standalone swf - Google Maps relies on the network to give access to their code, which is loaded remotely.
That said, if there are specific things you can do faster or more reliably in Google Maps I would like to know about them so I can fix them! Feel free to start another thread about ways that Modest Maps could be more polished or faster :)
I’m ashamed! Google is no excuse!
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Inappropriate?Dear Modest Map team,
We have our online mapping application at www.mapmandu.com, featuring location destinations in Kathmandu. The site is a DotNetNuke application with custom module for ModestMap, and custom map tiles. So far, we have had a great experience using ModestMap, however the lack of tile layers and KML overlay might make us consider other mapping platforms.
Best,
Lokesh -
Inappropriate?Hi Lokesh,
Thanks for letting us know about your project. I like the style of your hybrid cartography, it looks really great.
I have been working on two possible solutions for layers in the tween branch of Modest Maps:
1. for simple hybrid layers such as Google's or Yahoo's, the map provider code has been simplified so that you simply return an array of URLs to load for each tile
2. it is also possible to create more than one Map instance, with different providers, and synchronise them using event listeners. This approach allows you to set the alpha for each layer independently.
I will try to add the support for #2 to the codebase soon.
KML would be a great thing to handle (as would GeoRSS, GeoJSON), and I believe someone on the Google Maps discussion group recently posted a solution that extends the Adobe syndication classes to support KML data types. Hopefully that will be released under a license that lets us quickly adapt it to Modest Maps too.
I’m happy
2 Comments
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Having tried both Google Maps for Flash API and OpenScales, and now Modest Maps, I love the engine here. I was about to implement option #2 listed concerning layer support, and wondered if any work had been done in this area, and if so is there code or example that exists
Thankful fan,
Daniel -
Hi Daniel,
Somewhere in subversion there should be a "Hello Layers" example - sorry for being so vague, let me know if you don't find it.
The same approach powers http://calacademy.org/map so it should be reasonably robust. -
Inappropriate?Dear Modest Map team,
Thank you so much for you prompt reply. One of the reasons we went with Modest Map is because of its standalone capability. Once support for KML (and other formats) is available, we will have no reason to look at other mapping APIs.
Finally, we also want to thank the team for your great efforts, making it possible for developers like us not having to rely on Google Maps for developing great applications.
Best,
Lokesh
I’m happy
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Inappropriate?Dear Modest Map team:
We have a tour website using Modest Map, backend with MapServer and TileCache.
http://liuchiu.net/index.php?option=c...
We're still working on it, thank the team for the great library. -
Inappropriate?Hi Modest maps,
I used your software for a school project a few months ago(www.bartjunk.org). I loved it because it gave me freedom to manipulate the default appearance of the maps to my liking. I was apple to make it more of an art and design project and take it away from the default cartography display.
At the same time as designing and building this site, I was learning AS3, and I found the this forum as helpful as it can be for someone who doesn't know what they are doing. I also found the tutorials helpful but would like to see more, and some that address the fundamentals of how to access functions, why things are broken down the way they are, and maybe a bit outlining what can be customized, and what may run the risk of breaking subclassed function etc. I tiptoed very lightly because I did not know what was safe.
One thing I really had a hard time with is the documentation does not offer any layman's explanations. Everything is explained in programming jargon. So while I was able to get many things to work, I did not understand why. I think it would be really helpful if the documentation had some tips, or even just a plain explination of what the class does, what potential uses it has etc.I would like to give a specific example here, but I can't think of one - its been a while.
If I ever need to do another mapping project, I will definitely turn to Modest Maps.
I’m thankful
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Inappropriate?I've spent years using Flash now Flex for building front ends to Mapserver and ArcIMS spatial servers. Using Modest maps, I'm no longer locked into tool development. I can think more about the application itself; how to blend video, imagery, and text with the interactive tiled modest maps. The sky is truly the limit. I have some examples of various modest based projects at:
http://www.flexmappers.com
Thanks modest maps team
--Matt -
Inappropriate?I just started working with Modest Maps and I think I'm going to use it within my masters project. I was inspired by the ease of getting started and looking at Flowing Data's Walmart Visualization code.
I want to make a strip mall only map of Atlanta, no roads, no landmarks, just strip malls/shopping centers. It would be a pretty significant center piece in a larger project devoted to these ubiquitous nodes of capitalism.
Having said that, I will be working in Flex (as a n00b) and I can't really get subversion going on my mac. This might not be the proper thread to solicit help, but if anyone has any Flex/MM pointers (especially in relation to drawing clickable polygons with parsed XML data) I would be very grateful!
Thanks for the great code!!!
I’m excited!
7 Comments Add a comment
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Are you sure you need Flex? Personally I never use the Flex libraries and prefer plain actionscript 3 projects in Flex Builder. Nathan's Walmart viz at Flowing Data doesn't use Flex either and I think it's a pretty good example.
The Modest Maps Flex support hasn't really been updated since it was written about 2 years ago and you might not find it that easy to get started.
For help with polygons, there's some example code here: http://getsatisfaction.com/modestmaps... -
Ok. This is just an instance of my n00b-dom. I've been using Flex Builder but to make an actionscript project. I abandoned the MXML after I started playing with Nathan's code.
Thanks for the link. I'll definitely check that out! -
Excellent. Don't worry about it, it's Adobe's fault for naming things badly.
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oy vey. this is turning out to be a little funky. I don't have a copy of MM with the polylines classes and when I try to import the library from the walmart code things get crazy. is there any way to get the latest MM library without subversion? or is there an easy way to set up subversion on macs? or is there something I'm missing completely about "new actionscript projects" in Flex Builder? Sorry to be a pest ;)
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It's not a flex builder issue - you will need the latest version from subversion. We're trying to rearrange the way that we update modestmaps.com so that it will use the best version, but right now you're on your own with that.
There are many Mac subversion clients, commandline and not. I've used Versions and it's OK, I hear reasonable things about Zigversion and ScPlugin too. -
Because Mike rocks, there are new downloadable versions of Modest Maps here: http://modestmaps.com/download/ - I'll make a proper announcement about this soon, but if you're reading this then please help us out by testing the download. Thanks!
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I d/l-ed it just fine, but wanted to let mac users know I started using scplugin and, after a few restarts and some wonkiness, it works really well, pretty much just like Tortoise SVN on PCs. Awesome.
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Inappropriate?Hi,
we used Modest maps on the BBC news website a while back
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/b...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/6...
The experience was really good.
From a more or less standing start we had something on the live site in a couple of days. I like the fact that it just provides the basic tools and lets you get on with it.
Whilst I think we're going to opt for an open layers (http://openlayers.org/) based solution for most of the maps on the site. I look forward to using modest maps again for more bespoke projects.
Thankyou!
I’m thankful
