Thursday, November 08, 2012

Displaying routes and Markers in Google Earth

I used Google Maps to define routes and Markers. Only problem with it is that the Markers and routes are related. Upon creating hundreds of Markers and routes, Google Map start to truncate the list and make it into two page. This caused discontinuation of my Markers in relation to the routes. There is no way to show all the data at once.

One way out is to use Google Earth (not the browser version) to display. However, I noticed that there is a bug. Some of the routes have remarks. If you move the mouse over it, it will change to an arrow and you can click to view the comments. The bug caused some of the routes to stop showing the remarks.

The solution is to convert the KML to KMZ. I go to gpsvisualizer.com to do the conversion. Upon opening it in Google Earth. Everything worked just fine.

One guy suggested to do it in Google map itself. Just copy the KML address in the Google Map page. Open a new google map then paste the link into the search. Perform the search then copy the link address by clicking the link icon. Paste this in a new tab then book mark the page. It sure feel stupid just to view my own creation in this way but it worked. The whole list will appear in one page.

It is mighty weird that by posting the link in Facebook, the link will fail unless you convert it into a short URL. The conversion facility is in the link window itself. Just check it and you get the short URL.

Since I am an advocate for one touch easy access, it is deemed very low efficiency for me to create the link through the various steps every time I want to share a map., Thus, I created a custom map to do that. gmaps.js programmer provided this excellent library to create custom maps with various features.

What I did is simply remove the unnecessary elements from the html and modified the style to show the map full page plus replacing the sample KML link with the KML link of my map. I don't even have to post it on line to test the html. It is much slower to display the map. But it sure kills the boredom of generating the link to the map. I could even put all my maps in a selection list and share all the maps in one single map selecting page.



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