Excellent Online Mapping Tools for Web Developers
If you are a web developer and you are interested in using online mapping tools, you have to know that you can find plenty of such applications that can make your life easier. In this post, I will try to come up with some of the best online mapping tools according to my opinions and experiences.
MapBox
MapBox may represent one of the best choices for those that are looking for online mapping tools. It provides custom website maps and you can use those maps in order to develop your own maps. MapBox is a specialized platform for web mapping that is focused on developer’s needs. An aspect that should be mentioned is that MapBox is an open source company, so as a developer you may have the possibility to create your own apps. The products that are provided by MapBox are focused on analysis, geocoding, satellite or maps.
Google Earth and Google Maps
If you are a geo web developer, then you may try to use Google products, such as Google Earth and Google Maps. You can use Google Maps API Web Services and you will find documentation for a wide range of data such as roads, geolocation, elevation and many other spatial features. I’m sure that you have heard about these two tools and most of us use them several times. The good news is that you can use Google Earth and Google Maps in order to create and share online maps based on these two applications features. An important feature provided by Google Earth is that you can access detailed 3D terrain representations.
Other online mapping tools
Besides the above mentioned online mapping tools, you can try also some other great tools for web mapping, such as ZeeMaps. By using ZeeMaps, you can create your own interactive maps and discover a mobile friendly application, private mapping, GeoSearch and many other features.
You may also try ScribbleMaps, which allows you to create and share your maps. ScribbleMaps is a tool that works with a large kind of geospatial data, such as kml, dxf, shp and gpx.
You can also use ESRI’s tools for online mapping. In the past, I have worked with ArcGIS Online Explorer, but recently they have changed this application into Explorer ArcGIS, which is almost the same as the previous version. You can also try Leaflet or Open Layers, as online web mapping tools. I was almost forgotten about Bing Maps, which represents another important online mapping tool, similar with Google Maps. Another online mapping tool is batchgeo.com, which allows you to create your route maps once you have entered your destinations points.
As you may see from above, you will find a large variety of online web mapping applications. You just have to see exactly which of those are best for your needs and how much you can afford to invest in order to benefit from these online web mapping sources. I hope that with my post I managed to give a helping hand to those that are searching for a good option for online mapping tool.
