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Webmaster Forum / Flash / Data Integration / January 2007Using Flash to create a web mapping app?
This is something I've been tasked with having a look at - I've done a bit of web design work, and have used Flash a little, so familiar with the principles of the timeline, keyframing, and twining etc. The sort of thing we might be looking to produce would be similar to this site below : http://www.waterscape.com/Northern_Marches/map/ If anyone could give me any pointers as to how technically challenging that might get, or is it the sort of thing that although looks complex, might be relatively easy to achieve armed with a reasonable understanding of the Flash principles that are driving it. Cheers. Hi Its curious that you chose a site with absolutely no Flash content what-so-ever, so I am a liitle confused as to what it is you need. Is it the look, feel or design? your after. The mapping app, where you zoom and pan around, and click on icons to pull up info was all built with Flash apparently - or to be more specific using Ming, which I hadn't heard of, but is an open source PHP thing that let's you create Flash apps without Flash itself. Hi again Now I understand, the complexity of the controls is minor to the complexity of the map data. A simple solution is to use a system that already exists and implement it in your site. Take a look at http://www.google.com/apis/maps/ Hope it helps I work for a mapping company, so what we're looking at is producing something in house. We may end up licencing street level data through the google maps API thing, but we saw this, and thought it might be worth looking at to get some idea of what we might be able to come up with ourselves. So I guess the first step would be create an SWF of a set size, with some sample mapping of several times the dimensions of the SWF, and add in the navigation functionality - ie moving around the map image. Hi Yes exactly, although I would tend towards an Actionscript solution rather than using the Timeline. Refresh speed and ease of motion are paramount in this type of application, Actionscript undoubtedly will give you a more defined approach to control and extensibility. It's an interesting task, neither simple nor too complex - Flash would definetly be my tool of choice. If you need any help with sample coding or how-to's then don't hesitate to post me a line. Cheers - it's really an initial looksee. I've done a bit of website design up to database stuff using mySQL / PHP, and some basic flash stuff, so I get collared with any web related stuff - but I enjoy it (do a bit of freelance stuff in my own time) so am keen to develop those skills as much as i can. So my checking it out on here is really to try to keep me a step or two ahead of anything we might look to do. So I'm really coming to it knowing that Flash can do it, but not sure where to start with - on the one hand it's reinventing the wheel of something like the non Flash Multimap, but on the other we need to start somewhere, and we came across an interesting article in a cartographic journal about the site above that did it in house, on the cheap, and with a good user experience (ie smooth zooming, rather than redrawing) just using Flash. I don't really know much about action script - so if you know of any good tutorial type things kicking around the net anywhere that might achieve in the first instance that exercise of having a big map image load in the background with a limited area that could be navigated around, that would be a great start. Hi I will cobble together an example of a simple structure, at least you'll have something to improve. Stay Tuned Thank you - that would be much appreciated. Hi OK! I have something, it's relatively primitive - but it will give you an indictation of how easy it is to manipulate objects in Flash. Obviously I don't have access to Dynamic Map Data, so I have used a static image that you can move around, zoom in an out. I need an email address where I can send you the file. Thank you - you can send it to iain dot macdonald at blueyonder dot co dot uk If I can get that bit sussed it'll be a start, and then maybe get on to some of our techies here about the dynamic data. |
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