CanvasMap Prototype = HTML5 Canvas + Mapping

5. January 2012
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When Microsoft released the Windows 8 Developer Preview (Sept. 2011) I was a bit annoyed that they failed to include a “native” Bing Maps control for us to build with. Instead they require you embed the Bing Maps v7 Ajax map within an IFrame to use it. There are a few issues with this that I wont get into now. So, consequentially, I decided to prototype my own map control with the intended purpose to use it with JavaScript based WinRT apps if it turned out well. Disclaimer: The code for CanvasM... [More]

Bing Maps, JavaScript , ,

2012 Bing Maps Feature Wish List

19. December 2011
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The Bing Maps Silverlight control is really sweet (although it hasn’t been updated in forever) and the Ajax v7 control was a huge improvement performance wise over v6. However, the Bing Maps platform has a long way to go before I would consider it to be the mapping development platform I would hope it could someday become. Bing Maps Wish List Here’s a list of some features that I hope make their way into the Bing Maps platform for us developers to be able to utilize: 1) Bring 3D Mapping Back!... [More]

Bing Maps

Bing Maps v7 Ajax Hacks: InfoBox Description containing Html tags

10. July 2011
Comments (22)
For some odd reason the Bing Maps team decided to not allow HTML tags within the Description property of the InfoBox class they baked into the Bing Maps v7 Ajax control. I don’t know why they would limit it in such a way, but thankfully I have figured out a hack to override it and allow HTML tags as desired. Here’s a full sample page that adds a map with pushpin and infobox, and sets up overriding support to allow HTML tags within the infobox’s description:   <!DOCTYPE html> ... [More]

Bing Maps ,

Bing Maps v7 Ajax Hacks: Pushpin Tooltips via Html Title Attribute

10. July 2011
Comments (15)
The Bing Maps v7 Ajax control is still a bit lacking in functionality, and good for us it’s written in JavaScript so it’s easy to extent and hack. The following hack is an “unsupported” method of adding Tooltips to Pushpins by making use of the HTML Title attribute. The Google Maps API already has a “setTitle” method on Markers to add a Tooltip to the pins plotted. Now, thanks to this hack, the same can be done using the Bing Maps v7 Ajax control. Here’s a full sample page that adds a map wi... [More]

Bing Maps ,

Bing Maps JavaScript Intellisense Helper Now Available as Nuget Package

6. April 2011
Comments (25)
I just put out a Nuget Package to make it easier for you to include the Bing Maps Javascript Intellisense Helper within your web applications. http://nuget.org/List/Packages/BingMapsIntellisense_6

Bing Maps , ,

Step By Step: Bing Maps Silverlight and an Out Of Browser (OOB) Application

26. January 2011
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I’ve received a couple questions regarding the display of the Bing Maps Silverlight control within a Silverlight Out Of Browser (OOB) application, so I decided to write up a simple step by step example of creating a basic Silverlight OOB application that displays a map. Step By Step Example Follow the below steps to create a basic Silverlight OOB application that displays a map using the Bing Maps Silverlight control within Visual Studio 2010: Step 1: Create New Project In this case, I’m ... [More]

Bing Maps, Silverlight , ,

Geomap Project - HTML Extensions for Rendering Map Displays

13. January 2011
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One thing missing from HTML5 is the ability to render maps on a page. The Bing Maps and Google Maps JavaScript API’s are generally fairly simple to implement, but they could both be easier. I wrote up a small example API that allows you to add Maps, and plot data on those Maps, to an HTML page by using mostly HTML markup using a new <geomap/> tag. While this project uses JavaScript to perform the map rendering once the page loads, all you need to do to implement it is write some simple ma... [More]

HTML, Bing Maps , , ,

Bing Maps Ajax 7: Add a Simple Mini Map

19. December 2010
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The Bing Maps Ajax v7 control doesn’t include support for adding a Mini Map. So, I decided to quickly work up a simple example of adding one. Below is the source code for it and a zip download of the code at the bottom of the post. Source Code <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <meta http-equiv=&quo... [More]

Bing Maps ,

Bing Maps Ajax 7: Add Custom Navigation Bar Buttons using jQuery

18. December 2010
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The Bing Maps Ajax v7 control does not include support for adding custom buttons to the navigation bar (where the zoom, pan and map style buttons are). There may be times when you will want to add a custom button or two, and this post contains some simple code that will help you do so. Here’s a screenshot of this in action. The ‘Click Me’ link in the navigation bar is a custom button that the below code adds. Code First, here’s the code that I came up with to add custom navigation bar butto... [More]

Bing Maps ,

Bing Maps Ajax 7: Simple Pushpin Animation via Extension to Microsoft.Maps

30. November 2010
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When updating the location a pushpin using the Bing Maps Ajax Control, the pushpin instantly moves to its new location. Sometimes this may work, but other times it may be nice to animate the movement. Updating the location a vehicle in an asset tracking application is one example where it would be nice to animate the movement. I wrote a simple extension to the Bing Maps Ajax v7 control that adds the “Pushpin.moveLocation” method to perform such an animation. Usage Let’s start with some sample... [More]

Bing Maps ,

Bing Maps Ajax 7: Adding InfoBox Support via Extension to Microsoft.Maps

30. November 2010
Comments (19)
The new Bing Maps Ajax v7 control may be faster and smaller, but it is pretty light on features at the moment compared to its older brother; the v6.3 control. One of the features missing is support for showing InfoBox’s. Its simple to handle mouse events and display a <div> next to the pushpin, but I thought I’d take a little time to write a simple InfoBox extension to the new Microsoft.Maps namespace. Here’s a screenshot of it in action: Usage Let’s start with some sample usage of th... [More]

Bing Maps ,

Use New Bing Maps Road Imagery In Silverlight Map Control (Unofficially and Unsupported)

19. August 2010
Comments (3)
Recently the consumer facing Bing Maps site changed the map imagery that is displayed for the Road map mode. This map imagery has not been officially made available for Bing Maps for Enterprise developers to use within their applications. The imagery is only officially available to the Bing Maps consumer website. Unofficially, you can still access the imagery if you know the URL format to get it. Below is an example of using the URL format for the new imagery to display it within the Bing Maps ... [More]

Bing Maps, C#, Silverlight , ,

Loading Microsoft CDN Hosted OpenStreetMap Imagery in Silverlight Bing Maps Control

19. August 2010
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Recently a new Bing Maps App for OpenStreetMap (OSM) was released. This new feature of the Bing Maps consumer facing website is hosting the OpenStreetMap imagery using the Azure CDN, rather than relying on OpenStreetMap’s server. There has been some question as to whether developers can use the Microsoft hosted OpenStreetMap imagery within their own applications. I have not seen anything official from Microsoft on this, so I assume that doing this is against their terms of use. You assum... [More]

Bing Maps, C#, Silverlight , ,

Silverlight Bing Maps: Draw Circle Around a Latitude/Longitude Location

28. June 2010
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Over 2 years ago I posted an example of how to draw circles on the Bing Maps JavaScript control. I thought it was about time to update that post to demonstrate how to do this using the Bing Maps Silverlight control. This is basically a C# port of the original JavaScript code. Sometimes this can be really useful, but it isn’t built into the Sivleright Bing Maps Control. So you need to implement it yourself in order to do it. However, instead of writing from scratch, feel free to copy the ... [More]

Bing Maps, Silverlight , ,

Display Google Maps Imagery using Bing Maps Silverlight Control

14. June 2010
Comments (14)
I’ve gotten a couple emails asking how to show Google Maps imagery using the Bing Maps Silverlight Control. I previously post how to display OpenStreetMaps and Yahoo maps imagery using the control, but is it possible to show Google Maps imagery too?? Yes, absolutely; well technically, but the Google Maps Terms of Use does prohibit it. Actually, the Google Maps Terms of Use prohibits the direct access of the map tile images, and does not specifically prohibit using them with the Bing Maps S... [More]

Bing Maps, Silverlight , ,

Resizing and Auto-Scaling Pushpin in Bing Maps Silverlight

4. June 2010
Comments (31)
Plotting pushpins on the Bing Maps Silverlight control is really simple when using the Pushpin control that comes with the control. But, what if you want to change the size of the Pushpin? It doesn't work to just change the Pushpin.Height and Pushpin.Width properties. This is actually because those properties pertain to the controls Content property. So, how exactly do you go about changing the size of the Pushpin if the Height and Width properties don't work? Use ScaleTransform to Resize Pushp... [More]

Bing Maps, Silverlight ,

Draggable Pushpins using Bing Maps Silverlight Control

30. May 2010
Comments (48)
Using a map to visualize data within an application is great, but you must first get the location of the data to be displayed. If you have the address you can geocode it using the Bing Maps Web Services, but "What if you can't geocode it?" Or, "What if the geocoding can't find the address?" Well, if your user knows where the location is, then you can have them point it out by clicking on the map. Creating Pushpins in response to a users click is nice, but wouldn't it be even ... [More]

Bing Maps, Silverlight

Awarded 2010 Microsoft MVP - Windows Live Platform

1. April 2010
Comments (4)
"Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2010 Microsoft® MVP Award!" I'm happy to announce that I've been awarded the Microsoft MVP award for the third year in a row. Just like last year, I've been awarded within the "Windows Live Platform" category. The "Windows Live Platform" category includes the Bing Maps SDK (both JavaScript and Silverlight Map Controls) which is the product/technology that I work with and help out others with the most in this category. Congratulation... [More]

Bing Maps, General

Bing Maps JS: Calculate Area of Circle and Draw Circle on Map

2. March 2010
Comments (92)
Something that can be usefull at times in being able to calculate the total Area of a circle, especially when plotting it on a map. So, I decided to slightly modify my "Draw a Circle Radius Around Lat/Lng Point" to make it also calculate the Area of the circles and display that value within the TItle of the Circle Shapes Pushpin. Remember, back in Trig class, it's fairly simple to calculate the area of a circle. You just Multiply Pi by the Radius Squared. Area = Pi * (radius * radius) Anyway,... [More]

Bing Maps , ,

Prototype of OpenStreetMap Silverlight Control using DeepEarth and Bing Maps SDK

13. November 2009
Comments (15)
I’ve decided to expand a little on using OpenStreetMap imagery with the new Bing Maps Silverlight Control in response to the following comment posted by John O’Brien on my previous “Display OpenStreetMap Imagery using Bing Maps Silverlight Control v1” post: “Very close Chris but you will still need to enter a Bing Maps AppID. If however you create your own map from MapCore and don't use the Bing Maps services then you don't need creditials” Yes, it is t... [More]

Bing Maps, C#, Silverlight , , , ,

Display OpenStreetMap Imagery using Bing Maps Silverlight Control v1

12. November 2009
Comments (30)
The Bing Maps Silverlight SDK documentation on MSDN contains an article on Adding Tile Overlays to the Map, that demonstrates how to overlay your own map imagery over top of the Bing Maps Imagery. However, what if you want to completely replace the Bing Maps Imagery with some other Imagery like the OpenStreeMap Imagery? In the “Adding Tile Overlays to the Map” article it shows using a “LocationRectTileSource” to add the custom map imagery overlay. To implement the OpenS... [More]

Bing Maps, Silverlight , , ,

Getting Started with Bing Maps Silverlight Control v1.0

12. November 2009
Comments (47)
It’s been 8 months since the CTP release of the Bing Maps Silverlight Control at MIX’08, and finally this week Microsoft released the Final v1.0 release of the control to the web.  Now, we can all finally start using the Bing Maps Silverlight Control in Production! If you’ve worked with the CTP, then you’ll want to take a look at Ricky’s “Migrating from Bing Maps Silverlight CTP to Production Version” article. It explains all the stuff you’ll... [More]

Bing Maps, C#, Silverlight , , ,

MvcMaps Preview 1 – A Unified Bing/Google Maps API for ASP.NET MVC

2. November 2009
Comments (6)
I spent some time lately working on bringing some of the concepts of Web.Maps.VE to ASP.NET MVC. The concepts I’m referring to are Simplicity and Ease of Development in making the implementation of mapping within ASP.NET MVC applications as simple as possible along with the Flexibility and Customizability of the Base Mapping API itself. Then I thought, Since I’m building an abstraction layer to simplify Bing Maps development, why not implement it in a flexible manor as to be able to ... [More]

ASP.NET MVC, Bing Maps , , , ,

Easily Convert Between HTML and RGB Colors using JavaScript

24. October 2009
Comments (1)
To make things easier for converting between HTML Colors and RGB Colors using JavaScript I wrote the below “ColorConverter” object. This object has 2 methods that easily allow you to convert between HTML Colors (ex: #FF33C2) and RGB Colors (ex: 255, 0, 233). There isn’t anything built into JavaScript for doing this, and it can come in very handing when working with the Bing Maps VEColor object. Usage Examples: var rgb = ColorConverter.toRGB("#FF000A"); // returns {r:255, g:0, b:10} ... [More]

JavaScript, Bing Maps ,

Simplovation Web.Maps.VE v3.0 Now With FREE Edition!

26. August 2009
Comments (0)
Today, I just posted the latest Web.Maps.VE v3.0 release. The coolest thing about this new version is that is has a FREE Edition for non-commercial use! Download Web.Maps.VE v3.0 FREE Edition! There are a few new things in this latest release, but the most significant are the following performance updates: Microsoft CDN (Content Delivery Network) Support Added. This helps improve the Bing Maps content delivery speed by up to 82% JavaScript Performance Optimizations. All the JavaScript cod... [More]

asp.net, Bing Maps, JavaScript , , , , ,