Although it isn't very clear on the main list of new features, thanks to Mapperz for the heads-up that today's release of Firefox v3.5 includes a new geo-location feature.

This is an optional new feature that lets a website query the browser's geographic location. The user has to explicitly confirm that this it is okay to share the information. Location information is currently derived from wireless hotspot information and ISP location information. In a test this morning, this produced a 22km error circle for my location, but managed to find the correct half of Irving, Texas - if not quite the correct zipcode.

This article was previously published at GeoChalkboard in the form of a two-part article, and has been reproduced here with permission.

User expectations for web mapping applications have changed dramatically in the past few years thanks largely to Google Maps and Microsoft Bing Maps (nee Virtual Earth) technologies which brought “Web 2.0” to the masses and forever changed our expectations of how these applications should look, perform, and access data. With the advent of “Web 2.0” your applications must meet certain expectations including sleek interface controls, a better user experience driven largely by asynchronous data processing and client-side scripting, drag and drop capabilities, and the ability to combine or “mashup” multiple data sources into a single application. A number of JavaScript toolkits including Dojo, jQuery, Yui, Mochikit, and many others have been developed to enable these capabilities. ESRI recently released the JavaScript API for ArcGIS Server which was built on top of the Dojo toolkit and enables developers to take advantage of the capabilities provided by this JavaScript toolkit. Dojo is also a highly flexible toolkit that allows you to pick and choose the pieces of the toolkit that best fit your needs. According to Jayant Sai of ESRI, “We like the fact that our users can use the whole Dojo toolkit to build their next generation web 2.0 mapping application, or use just our mapping components, without really getting into the hardcore JavaScript pieces of the toolkit.”

This article concentrates on the use of Dojo for building web mapping applications. We will not only examine how Dojo is used with the ArcGIS Server JavaScript API, but you’ll also see how you can use this toolkit with other mapping API’s including Google Maps. We will start with a simple overview of Dojo and how it can be used in your web based GIS applications.

Although KML has quickly become the main format used for map annotation, it has a number of advanced features which only have limited support outside of Google Earth. Some of these absences are logical - for example, few mapping systems support 3d views and buildings. With the current pace of development it is likely that many of the other advanced features will be added to future versions of these products. One of the advanced features that will almost certainly see much wider support is that of animation. This article looks at KML's animation and dynamic update features.