Book Image

Mastering OpenLayers 3

By : Gábor Farkas
Book Image

Mastering OpenLayers 3

By: Gábor Farkas

Overview of this book

OpenLayers 3 allows you to create stunning web mapping and WebGIS applications. It uses modern, cutting edge browser technologies. It is written with Closure Library, enabling you to build browser-independent applications without painful debugging ceremonies, which even have some limited fallback options for older browsers. With this guide, you will be introduced to the world of advanced web mapping and WebGIS. First, you will be introduced to the advanced features and functionalities available in OpenLayers 3. Next, you will be taken through the key points of creating custom applications with OpenLayers 3. You will then learn how to create the web mapping application of yours (or your company's) dream with this open source, expense-free, yet very powerful library. We’ll also show you how to make amazing looking thematic maps and create great effects with canvas manipulation. By the end of this book, you will have a strong command of web mapping and will be well on your way to creating amazing applications using OpenLayers 3.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Mastering OpenLayers 3
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Using different renderers


As you may already know, there are three different renderers in OpenLayers 3. The DOM renderer is a legacy method that supports pre-HTML5 browsers. The main limitation of this renderer is that it cannot display vector layers. Vector layers are rendered using a canvas if the DOM renderer is used. Only tile and image layers are created as separate DOM elements. If you must support legacy browsers, which cannot use the canvas element, OpenLayers 2 is a better choice for you as it supports SVG and VML rendering.

The second one is the Canvas renderer, which is the default. It draws every layer separately on a single canvas element, outperforming its predecessor. For now, we don't have to know anything specific about canvas elements; we will see the possibilities of canvas manipulation in further examples.

The third one is a cutting-edge technology called WebGL. WebGL is the browser implementation of OpenGL, making browsers capable of hardware-accelerated rendering. The...