In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
OpenLayers is a big and complex framework. Advantageously, such a powerful and mature framework allows us to work with many GIS standards, read from many different data sources, render on different browser technologies, and so on. This capability does come at a cost, complexity, and download size to name a few.
As when learning anything else, spending time with OpenLayers will result in a familiarization of the library concepts, and we'll look at how to reduce download size in the Using the custom OpenLayers library build recipe, which is especially useful for mobile users or situations where network limitations may be unavoidable.
The implementation of OpenLayers 3 has less homegrown utility functionality, as seen in OpenLayers 2. OpenLayers 3 leans on the Google Closure library for this reason. With Google Closure embedded in the library core, OpenLayers is theoretically a self-contained library with no other dependencies required.
In this chapter, we'll take a look at some more practical examples to create full-featured mapping applications. We'll demonstrate recipes that will help you out with mundane day-to-day tasks (Working with projections) and other recipes that will further enhance your applications (Making use of map permalinks). In places, this chapter may be better suited for more experienced JavaScript programmers, but please don't let this deter your reading if you don't meet this criteria.
After completing this chapter and the preceding chapters, we hope that you'll be confidently ready to take on any other product requirements that you may need to implement at work.