Table of Contents for
OpenLayers 3 : Beginner's Guide

Version ebook / Retour

Cover image for bash Cookbook, 2nd Edition OpenLayers 3 : Beginner's Guide by Erik Hazzard Published by Packt Publishing, 2015
  1. Cover
  2. Table of Contents
  3. OpenLayers 3 Beginner's Guide
  4. OpenLayers 3 Beginner's Guide
  5. Credits
  6. About the Authors
  7. About the Reviewers
  8. www.PacktPub.com
  9. Preface
  10. What you need for this book
  11. Who this book is for
  12. Sections
  13. Time for action – heading
  14. Conventions
  15. Reader feedback
  16. Customer support
  17. 1. Getting Started with OpenLayers
  18. Advantages of using OpenLayers
  19. What, technically, is OpenLayers?
  20. Anatomy of a web mapping application
  21. Connecting to Google, Bing Maps, and other mapping APIs
  22. Time for action – downloading OpenLayers
  23. Time for action – creating your first map
  24. Where to go for help
  25. OpenLayers issues
  26. OpenLayers source code repository
  27. Getting live news from RSS and social networks
  28. Summary
  29. 2. Key Concepts in OpenLayers
  30. Time for action – creating a map
  31. Time for action – using the JavaScript console
  32. Time for action – overlaying information
  33. OpenLayers' super classes
  34. Key-Value Observing with the Object class
  35. Time for action – using bindTo
  36. Working with collections
  37. Summary
  38. 3. Charting the Map Class
  39. Time for action – creating a map
  40. Map renderers
  41. Time for action – rendering a masterpiece
  42. Map properties
  43. Time for action – target practice
  44. Map methods
  45. Time for action – creating animated maps
  46. Events
  47. Views
  48. Time for action – linking two views
  49. Summary
  50. 4. Interacting with Raster Data Source
  51. Layers in OpenLayers 3
  52. Common operations on layers
  53. Time for action – changing layer properties
  54. Tiled versus untiled layers
  55. Types of raster sources
  56. Tiled images' layers and their sources
  57. Time for action – creating a Stamen layer
  58. Time for action – creating a Bing Maps layer
  59. Time for action – creating tiles and adding Zoomify layer
  60. Image layers and their sources
  61. Using Spherical Mercator raster data with other layers
  62. Time For action – playing with various sources and layers together
  63. Time For action – applying Zoomify sample knowledge to a single raw image
  64. Summary
  65. 5. Using Vector Layers
  66. Time for action – creating a vector layer
  67. How the vector layer works
  68. The vector layer class
  69. Vector sources
  70. Time for action – using the cluster source
  71. Time for action – creating a loader function
  72. Time for action – working with the TileVector source
  73. Time for action – a drag and drop viewer for vector files
  74. Features and geometries
  75. Time for action – geometries in action
  76. Time for action – interacting with features
  77. Summary
  78. 6. Styling Vector Layers
  79. Time for action – basic styling
  80. The style class
  81. Time for action – using the icon style
  82. Have a go hero – using the circle style
  83. Multiple styles
  84. Time for action – using multiple styles
  85. Style functions
  86. Time for action – using properties to style features
  87. Interactive styles
  88. Time for action – creating interactive styles
  89. Summary
  90. 7. Wrapping Our Heads Around Projections
  91. Time for action – using different projection codes
  92. Time for action – determining coordinates
  93. OpenLayers projection class
  94. Transforming coordinates
  95. Time for action – coordinate transforms
  96. Time for action – setting up Proj4js.org
  97. Time for action – reprojecting extent
  98. Time for action – using custom projection with WMS sources
  99. Time for action – reprojecting geometries in vector layers
  100. Summary
  101. 8. Interacting with Your Map
  102. Time for action – converting your local or national authorities data into web mapping formats
  103. Time for action – testing the use cases for ol.interaction.Select
  104. Time for action – more options with ol.interaction.Select
  105. Introducing methods to get information from your map
  106. Time for action – understanding the forEachFeatureAtPixel method
  107. Time for action – understanding the getGetFeatureInfoUrl method
  108. Adding a pop-up on your map
  109. Time for action – introducing ol.Overlay with a static example
  110. Time for action – using ol.Overlay dynamically with layers information
  111. Time for action – using ol.interaction.Draw to share new information on the Web
  112. Time for action – using ol.interaction.Modify to update drawing
  113. Understanding interactions and their architecture
  114. Time for action – configuring default interactions
  115. Discovering the other interactions
  116. Time for action – using ol.interaction.DragRotateAndZoom
  117. Time for action – making rectangle export to GeoJSON with ol.interaction.DragBox
  118. Summary
  119. 9. Taking Control of Controls
  120. Adding controls to your map
  121. Time for action – starting with the default controls
  122. Controls overview
  123. Time for action – changing the default attribution styles
  124. Time for action – finding your mouse position
  125. Time for action – configuring ZoomToExtent and manipulate controls
  126. Creating a custom control
  127. Time for action – extending ol.control.Control to make your own control
  128. Summary
  129. 10. OpenLayers Goes Mobile
  130. Using a web server
  131. Time for action – go mobile!
  132. The Geolocation class
  133. Time for action – location, location, location
  134. The DeviceOrientation class
  135. Time for action – a sense of direction
  136. Debugging mobile web applications
  137. Debugging on iOS
  138. Debugging on Android
  139. Going offline
  140. Time for action – MANIFEST destiny
  141. Going native with web applications
  142. Time for action – track me
  143. Summary
  144. 11. Creating Web Map Apps
  145. Using geospatial data from Flickr
  146. Time for action – getting Flickr data
  147. A simple application
  148. Time for Action – adding data to your map
  149. Styling the features
  150. Time for action – creating a style function
  151. Creating a thumbnail style
  152. Time for action – switching to JSON data
  153. Time for action – creating a thumbnail style
  154. Turning our example into an application
  155. Time for action – adding the select interaction
  156. Time for action – handling selection events
  157. Time for action – displaying photo information
  158. Using real time data
  159. Time for action – getting dynamic data
  160. Wrapping up the application
  161. Time for action – adding dynamic tags to your map
  162. Deploying an application
  163. Creating custom builds
  164. Creating a combined build
  165. Time for action – creating a combined build
  166. Creating a separate build
  167. Time for action – creating a separate build
  168. Summary
  169. A. Object-oriented Programming – Introduction and Concepts
  170. Going further
  171. B. More details on Closure Tools and Code Optimization Techniques
  172. Introducing Closure Library, yet another JavaScript library
  173. Time for action – first steps with Closure Library
  174. Making custom build for optimizing performance
  175. Time for action – playing with Closure Compiler
  176. Applying your knowledge to the OpenLayers case
  177. Time for action - running official examples with the internal OpenLayers toolkit
  178. Time for action - building your custom OpenLayers library
  179. Syntax and styles
  180. Time for action – using Closure Linter to fix JavaScript
  181. Summary
  182. C. Squashing Bugs with Web Debuggers
  183. Time for action – opening Chrome Developer Tools
  184. Explaining Chrome Developer debugging controls
  185. Time for action – using DOM manipulation with OpenStreetMap map images
  186. Time for action – using breakpoints to explore your code
  187. Time for action – playing with zoom button and map copyrights
  188. Using the Console panel
  189. Time for action – executing code in the Console
  190. Time for action – creating object literals
  191. Time for action – interacting with a map
  192. Improving Chrome and Developer Tools with extensions
  193. Debugging in other browsers
  194. Summary
  195. D. Pop Quiz Answers
  196. Chapter 5, Using Vector Layers
  197. Chapter 7, Wrapping Our Heads Around Projections
  198. Chapter 8, Interacting with Your Map
  199. Chapter 9, Taking Control of Controls
  200. Chapter 10, OpenLayers Goes Mobile
  201. Appendix B, More details on Closure Tools and Code Optimization Techniques
  202. Appendix C, Squashing Bugs with Web Debuggers
  203. Index

Map renderers

By default, OpenLayers draws, or renders, the map in the browser using an HTML 5 canvas element and its associated 2D drawing context. This is known as the Canvas renderer. However, OpenLayers actually comes with three renderers. The ability to choose a different renderer for the map can be very powerful but it should also be used with care. Each renderer has some specific capabilities and limitations. In particular, only the Canvas renderer is considered stable at the time of writing this book.

The Canvas renderer

The Canvas renderer draws the map's contents onto an HTML 5 canvas element (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canvas_element). The canvas element is a high-performance 2D drawing surface supported by all modern web browsers (on Internet Explorer, Canvas support starts with version 9). The canvas renderer is the most fully supported renderer in OpenLayers. It does not support some of the advanced features of the WebGL renderer, including 3D, controlling the contrast, brightness, hue and saturation of a layer, and other advanced capabilities requiring the power of WebGL.

You will most likely want to use this renderer until WebGL is more broadly supported, unless you are building an application that can target browsers that specifically support WebGL.

The WebGL renderer

Note

WebGL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebGL) is a powerful technology that gives the web browser access to hardware-accelerated 2D and 3D graphics rendering, normally available only to desktop software, typically games. With this renderer, OpenLayers will be able to efficiently render a lot of vector and raster data simultaneously. At the time of this writing, rendering of vector data with WebGL was still in development and not yet available.

It even provides the ability to render data in 3D and give full 3D navigation. Given how fantastic all this sounds, why wouldn't you use it all the time? Unfortunately, WebGL support in a browser is dependent on two things. First, the user's computer must have a graphics card and software drivers that are capable of supporting it. Second, the web browser itself must support it. Since WebGL is a relatively new specification, only the newest versions of Google Chrome, Safari, and Firefox will enable WebGL on systems with capable hardware. Internet Explorer up to version 10 does not provide WebGL support at all, although there are third-party plugins that can be added by users to provide it. Finally, mobile browser support is very limited and varies widely at this time.

In summary, the WebGL renderer can give your application amazing performance and some cutting edge capabilities if your intended users can be relied on to have the latest web browser versions and capable hardware. It isn't suitable if you need to support older web browsers, Internet Explorer, or mobile users.

The DOM renderer

The DOM renderer draws the map's contents using HTML elements (<img> and <div> tags) and uses CSS to position them. This renderer is supported by older versions of most browsers, including Internet Explorer 8. However, it does not provide many of the capabilities enjoyed by the Canvas renderer. Of the features that it does not support, the most important is vector support covered in Chapter 6, Styling Vector Layers. The DOM renderer will also generally exhibit poorer performance.

There is some effort being undertaken by community members to provide some vector capabilities for the DOM renderer, including support for Internet Explorer 8, but in general, you will probably not want to use the DOM renderer unless you need to support older browsers that do not provide Canvas support.

Note

Vector support for the DOM renderer has been added to OpenLayers since the 3.0 release covered in this book and should be available for general use in the next release.