GEOG 863
GIS Mashups for Geospatial Professionals

Overview

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In Lesson 3, you'll be exposed to the "Hello, World" page of the Google Maps JavaScript API. Hello World programs have been encountered by computer programming students learning a new language for many years. The folks who developed the GNU operating system have a funny list of Hello World programs written by people of different ages and occupations. Perhaps you can find one that matches you.

To make sense of the Google Maps Hello, World page, you'll need to recall the web content authoring technologies covered in the previous lesson:

  • Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)
  • Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
  • HTML Document Object Model (DOM)
  • JavaScript

After dissecting the various parts of the Google Maps Hello, World page, you'll finish the lesson by modifying the page to include a marker that depicts the location of your hometown.

Objectives

At the successful completion of this lesson, students should be able to:

  • use the Google Maps website to locate places by various search methods;
  • manually construct a URL that will load a desired Google Map;
  • insert JavaScript into a web page;
  • use JavaScript and the Google Maps API to add a custom map to a web page;
  • set the initial extent parameters of a custom map;
  • obtain information on how to work with objects defined in the API through the API Reference;
  • add markers (points) to a map;
  • cite examples of well-known Google Maps API apps.

Questions?

If you have any questions now or at any point during this week, please feel free to post them to the Lesson 3 Discussion Forum. (That forum can be accessed at any time by clicking on the Discussions tab within Canvas.)