Map Upgrade 2014

New features and enhancements

The recent upgrade of the University map (http://map.cam.ac.uk) has introduced a range of printing features, enhanced the interface, and added the oEmbed functionality to make it even easier to embed maps into CMSs. It is now possible to reliably print the map or export an area of the map as a graphic for use on printed materials.

Exporting or printing

• Once you have located the area you wish to export or print, you can access the functionality by clicking on the print icon on the left side of the map.
• The Export/print pages have headers and footers in a different colour (red) so you notice you aren't on the map. They give four options:
  • Quick Print: just get what you see as an A4 PDF
  • PDF A4 page: orientation, area and scale options
  • PNG image: for a website or pasted into e.g. a Word document (why not JPEG?)
  • PDF extract: for embedding in a page layout (e.g. in Adobe InDesign) or for higher quality and arbitrary size printing (why not EPS?)

Interface enhancements

• Now uses the leaflet.js library to display map tiles, resulting in improved performance, better zooming, and keyboard support
  • as a side effect of this change a right-click no longer pulls up the map's context menu (but you can still use a left-click), and the way that polygons are moved when annotating has changed slightly
• The context menu that appears when you click on the map has been modified to add features and make it easier to use
  • it now includes a link to Google Street view
• When showing current location on mobile devices, the map now updates as you move
• Map markers are now persistent between searches, and more than one marker can be set
• When annotating the map, the header and footer change to a different colour (green) so you notice you aren't on the map. See Map Annotation for further details on annotation.

oEmbed

oEmbed is now built into the map so that it can automatically recognise a map URL and supply the embed code. This is fully explained, with some information about how to employ it is your CMS and a plug-in for WordPress - see The Embedding API - oEmbed. oEmbed will be added to Falcon with the next round of enhancements, during Michaelmas Term.