Linde002::PHP

For a project for the PHP expertise group at Sogeti that I’m doing I’ve started to work with jQuery and the Google Maps API, something I should’ve done way earlier but I just didn’t get around to it. First of all let me say that both jQuery and the GMaps API are excellent pieces of software*,  they are both easy to implement and use and there’s tons of documentation available (something that we can’t say for all public API’s…. Yes, I’m looking at you hyves).

The thing I did notice in a lot of websites that use some form of the GMaps API is that they forget to add just one line of code:

map.enableScrollWheelZoom();

What this does is allow the user to zoom in or out using his scrollwheel. Or, if you have a mac like me, using two fingers on the touchpad. This behaviour is the same as that found on the real Google Maps application and it is something that users not only find handy, but notice missing when it doesn’t work.

So to all the people who are integrating Google Maps into their applications, please please please, keep the UI responding like the real thing. Except for when you do not require any interaction with the map at all and it just functions as a ‘pretty picture’.

* Note that I’m saying this from a UI developer’s point of view, the finer technical details are still mostly unbeknownst to me