I am looking for a light-weight map component that displays a map of the US and allows users to click on a State and see information pertaining to that state. The data I want to display is in my database. I just need to know what state was selected so I can display the detail. This is something I am doing to get familiar with Silverlight.
All the searches for Silverlight/ Maps I have done so far have pointed me at solutions that are far more complicated than I need. My perception is that using Bing Maps to do this simple task would a waste of the features provide by Bing.
Anyone know of such a Component? Am I wrong that Bing Maps is not the right tool for the job?
TIA!
If you have access to Expression Studio (specifically Expression Design), creating maps as vector based images is quite easy. Poly-paths in Xaml are also relatively efficient to store and serve up compared to images.
You import a map as a background image and use the pen tool to dot-to-dot trace around the country. Combine all those path segments into a single path. Then create a separate poly-path for each state (close them to allow for a fill).
It will take a few hours to build all this (I know having done this for a world map country selector... took 4-5 hours solid for the one polygon styled below):
By having each state represented by a filled polygon-path highlighting (by changing the fill colour) is trivial on mouse-enter/mouse-leave events.
If you want stylistic map, remove the image, otherwise use transparency on the state polygons to show the map through the roll-overs.
Update:
And if you get yourself a graphic tablet and pen this sort of point-to-point work is about 5 times faster than with a mouse!
The interaction with Bing Maps in Silverlight is really strong and provide you with easy communication between the map and your data. I would give Bing Maps a try.
I'm not sure if you've already come across this, but it seems you can also use the control with custom tile sources. Here are a few resources.
http://www.cadmaps.com/gisblog/?p=54
http://developers.de/blogs/damir_dobric/archive/2009/11/16/implementing-custom-map-in-silverlight-map-control.aspx
http://labs.mandogroup.com/skinning-the-silverlight-bing-maps-control/
Custom Rendering in Bing Silverlight Control
Related
I have a silverlight application which different panels, One of the panel contains the ESRI map, I want to print what is coming on the map panel, It's more like a print screen for map (but it should not include rest of the controls of the client application).
On investigation I found that we can use PrintTask but it uses GP server. I do not want to invoke the ESRI service for print.
Is there any other way to print what is coming on the screen (inside the map panel) in the silver light?
Atul Sureka
If you are using the latest version of the Esri Silverlight API, you have access to client side printing. See their example here:
https://developers.arcgis.com/silverlight/sample-code/start.htm#ClientPrinting
It is nice in that it gives you a proper WYSIWYG interface for printing, visibly seeing the extent and can handle custom markers way better than the print service. The downside is though that unless your source map is high enough resolution you'll end up with quite low-res maps unless you perform some kind of map switching when a user triggers the print interface. You'll also need to define print templates in xaml rather than in ArcMap.
It basically boils down to cloning your map and copying all the layers across.
I'm trying to implement a polygon based heatmap (i.e., instead of the color transitioning smoothly between two points, the color is the same within each polygon and changes across polygons).
The polygon color will tell the user which area's of the map are "good" and which are "bad". Similar to what these guys are doing here (http://illustreets.co.uk/explore-england/).
However, the color of the polygons will depend on the user input. Therefore, they have to be rendered dynamically. I don't think that the client will be able to handle the rendering, so the rendering will have to happen on the server.
I'm currently exploring ArcGIS as an option.
Does anybody know how to accomplish what I need in ArcGIS (or any other products)?
It would be best if I can find sample code that does something similar.
Thanks!
Based on our discussion in the comments, I can suggest the D3.js library. It is designed to make dynamic visualization easy.
http://d3js.org/
I need to find a control that can be used to construct a map.
I'm looking for something where a user can specify a location and then drag markers from a toolbar onto the map. Loading/saving would be a plus
I tried Telertik Map , IG and also Component One but I'm not 100% sure about these products.
You might try hosting Google Maps in WPF; it has a fairly complete API.
Any of the components you listed would definitely get the job done (personally, I prefer Infragistics), but they will be expensive.
Finally, you could head a different direction and try to go open-source. SharpMap might be worth investigation. This question has more details.
There is now a WPF Bing Maps Control
http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/maps/archive/2012/01/12/announcing-the-bing-maps-windows-presentation-foundation-control-v1.aspx
Anyone know which control they used on this site to get the Organisation chart? http://www.yworks.com/products/yfilessilverlight/SilverChart.html
Or any other controls that are similiar?
If not, could you suggest a way on how to get started building one? (Interface-wise, I think I know how to get the data binding to work).
The organisation chart control is their own, thats whole point of the demo page.
The UI elements involved are quite simple rectangular items. The real trick is calculating their placement on panel and routing the connecting lines.
I guess the missing peice of the puzzle is what generically we would call that. If you know that then you have a basis for a web search for algorithms for doing this sort of thing either academically or in some other product entirely, then bring that knowledge to your own Silverlight code.
Alternatively you could just go out buy the product.
I just started learning Silverlight and onTop of that I have to create a map viewer that displays our map tiles. I have search EVERYWHERE online and cant find anything that helps me. All Im looking for is a way to Display the tiles and have it draggable so that it starts pulling off more Tiles from the server. I'd like to build it from scratch but im not sure where to begin. I've looked at the whole microsoft BING thing but that doesnt help as its too much of BINGS's own stuff. Going in circles looking everywhere else.
The control you are looking for is MultiScaleImage control. This allows not only for an image to be composed of tiles but also various zoom levels. Its worth taking the time to read the MSDN docs on this control.