Preface

Maps are an essential element in today's location-aware applications, but they lack variation and customization. The Mapbox platform offers the tools and APIs required to totally customize, populate, and publish a map.

In this book, starting with the basics of Mapbox Editor for your first map styling steps, we will take you all the way to building advanced web and mobile applications with completely customizable map styles. The book focuses on the CartoCSS styling language as well as Mapbox tools and its JavaScript API, which inherits from Leaflet and is one of the most established, robust, and easy-to-use libraries.

We will then introduce two core Mapbox tools: TileMill and Mapbox Studio. Using them, we will generate custom-styled map tiles and vector maps. We will then move on to how to publish your custom maps using PHP, Node.js, and third-party tools such as GeoServer.

The next step is to start using the Mapbox JavaScript API and Leaflet to create different visualization map styles, such as a choropleth map and a heat map, and add user interactivity using UTFGrid.

We will continue with the advanced chapters and focus on integrating with third-party services such as Foursquare, Google Fusion Tables, CartoDB, and Torque to help us populate and even animate our maps.

Finally, we will end the book with a chapter dedicated to mobile devices. You will learn about Mapbox GL and how to create a fully functional, location-aware mobile app, which will use the map styles created in the earlier recipes.

This book is fast-paced, and the recipes are easy to follow. While it focuses on a recipe approach, it dives into the core concepts and theory of the technologies used to help you understand the theory required for GIS, web, and mobile development.