Chris Pietschmann

This is the first official release of the Virtual Earth Toolkit. The toolkit is by no means complete, but this is a "stable" collection of the Controls, Extenders and Methods that have been implemented thus far.

Project: http://codeplex.com/VEToolkit

Download the Release: http://www.codeplex.com/VEToolkit/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx

What is the Virtual Earth Toolkit?

The Virtual Earth Toolkit is a set of JavaScript-based Controls/Tools that Extend Virtual Earth with functionality that is commonly implemented, but hasn't been implemented within the Virtual Earth JavaScript Map Control.

The Controls/Tools in the VEToolkit library are completely self contained, and don't require the use of any other JavaScript library to use other than Virtual Earth 6.2 (current version). This allows you to use this toolkit along-side any other JavaScript library (jQuery, ASP.NET AJAX, etc.); plus you can make use of it with any server-side framework of you choice (ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, PHP, etc.).

Features

Below is a summary of what's included in this release:

• Controls
  
  • VEToolkit.ShapeListControl
    • A simple control that displays a list of Shapes that are currently plotted on the VEMap.
• Extenders
  • VEToolkit.ContextMenuExtender
    • This extends the VEMap with Context Menu (right click menu) support.
  • VEToolkit.DragShapeExtender
    • This extends the VEMap to allow the user to reposition Shapes by simply clicking and dragging them around the map. It also implements functionality that allows you (the programmer) to determine at runtime which Shapes are draggable.
  • VEToolkit.MiniMapExtender
    • This extends the VEMap with better MiniMap support; allowing the MiniMap to easily be positioned and aligned into any side/corner of the VEMap display.
• Helper Methods
  • VEToolkit.LoadAPI
    • This methods allows you to easily load the Virtual Earth JavaScript API On-Demand at runtime.
  • VEToolkit.Drawing.DrawCircle
    • This method returns a collection of VELatLong objects that represent a Circle with a given radius surrounding a specific VELatLong center point.
  • VEToolkit.Math.CalculateBearing
    • This method calculates the bearing (in degrees) between two VELatLong coordinates. This can be used to calculate the direction an object is pointing or traveling.
  • VEToolkit.Math.CalculateInverseCoordinate
    • This method calculates the Inverse VELatLong coordinate for a given VELatLong coordinate. (Or opposite position on the globe)
  • VEToolkit.Math.CalculateMidPoint
    • This method calculates the Mid Point (Center Point) in between two VELatLong coordinates.
  • VEToolkit.Math.GetPolygonCentroid
    • This method calculates the approximate Centroid (Center Point) of a Polygon.
  • VEToolkit.Math.IsInPolygon
    • This method calculates whether a given VELatLong coordinate exists within a given Polygon made up of an Array/collection of VELatLong coordinates.

JavaScript Intellisense

The VEToolkit also includes full Visual Studio 2008 JavaScript Intellisense Support