GPlotter 0.90 Released!
February 6th, 2007I have updated GPlotter to make use of the revised Google Maps API. I also completely restructured the Javascript to a much more object oriented coding style. I am using the latest release of Prototype, which recently moved to a new location as well as posted a great deal of new documentation. I am using Prototype for the object inheritance and AJAX functionality.
GPlotter still works as it did before but Google did change the zoom level. You will want to change the zoom level in your XML files. (see Zoom Level Order) The documentation explains the new zoom should be 17 minus the old zoom value.
Perhaps best of all, to change GPlotter for your own custom purposes you can use the Prototype inheritance mechanism to inherit and extend GPlotter. And if you do extend or customize GPlotter I would like to see your changes. I would be happy to consider incorporating your changes into GPlotter if the new features are helpful to others.
I should note that the update to the new Google Maps API was pretty difficult. The upgrade guide claims it was "designed to be 99% backwards-compatible with the previous version of the API" but I found that I had to call differently named methods and pass in new objects. For example, the centerAndZoom method was replaced with setCenter and instead of using a GPoint object it now uses the GLatLng object to specify the location on the map. Not using the right methods or passing in the right objects caused the script to fail and not render the map all while not showing any errors. Fortunately I was able to use Firebug to walk through it line by line and discover exactly where it was failing. Before I started to use Firebug I was lost for a while. It really is an invaluable tool. (see FireBug in action)
May 10th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
Just looked at this and created a test page for it. But it doesn't draw the map correctly until after I re-size the window.