New Menu Creation Options.

So, some exciting developments in GIS lately. After taking almost a yearlong break from working on GIS I feel like the past few weeks I've really been able to come back – and with a bang. I feel like all of the work I did previously is really helping me build toward something very powerful, and the new skills that I continue to acquire become more and more helpful as time goes on, and in unexpected ways.

The new developments lately have been in the ability to present high-quality maps easily. I think the first map I did with google took me about three months to create, and was pretty much holy hell to figure out. A lot of that has to do with my unfamiliarity with Javascript, but a lot of it is the lack of a good presentation framework for building a menus system to deal with the functionality of the Googlemaps API (which is phenomenal).

The discovery of a system that allows me to build feature rich menus while continueing to use the Google Maps API as my framework AND allow integration into that framework of data from ESRI layers published by Map Servers was a huge one. The Open Source software that does this is GeoEXT, which is based on the functionality of OpenLayers combined with the user-friendly and intuitive menu functionality of EXT Js (now Sencha). The result is full featured maps that can do just about anything you might request of them. And, its all javascript, as near as I can tell: which means you could overlay a processing layer using PHP or your other favorite programming language and you really can do anything.

http://www.geoext.org/

I felt stuck in a rut for a while, but with the advent of this new software and the wealth of possibilities is allows for I feel reenvigorated, and that is a wonderful thing for a project that I have been looking forward to continuing to work on for such a long time.

Dom