Making Maps!

Date Icon Posted on Tuesday 7th March 2006 @ 9:30pm GMT

Screenshot: Embedded Google Map on the Hillview websiteI've recently been having some fun with the Google Maps API. This may not sound like fun to most of you, but I am a developer and developers like this kind of thing :)

Anyway... The Google Maps API allows a web developer to embed a custom Google map into a webpage. Not only can you define the latitude and longitude of the map's centre point, you can add markers, overlays and other cool stuff.

To see the result of my experimenting, please visit the Hillview School Maps page. On this page I've added a map with an address marker for the school as well as added a “quick directions” function. This function allows you to choose from a drop-down list of five or more common locations that Hillview's visitors tend to come from. Hitting the Go button then takes you to a Google Local page with directions and a nice looking map... all within two seconds flat :)

If you'd like a map for your website, you could read up about the Maps API here or you could take the lazy option and get this site to generate the map code for you... It all depends on how much fun you'd like to have. ;)