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

Before getting started


Before moving on and customizing the default appearance, we should talk about its rendering process. OpenLayers 3 is a canvas-based web mapping library, which means that it draws everything it can on a single canvas element. This not only makes the rendering process faster, but also prevents direct styling with CSS. However, there are some parts rendered as pure DOM elements. These parts, specifically the controls, overlays, and drag boxes, can be styled directly. For the other parts, like vector data, the capabilities of the canvas element can be used for styling, mostly with inner methods. We will discuss rendering in a later chapter in more detail. For now, keeping this nature of the library in mind should be enough.

Tip

Using the DOM renderer opens up new possibilities in CSS styling. However, it cannot render vector data in SVG format; therefore, you can only style image layers directly. The library also loses performance; thus, using the DOM renderer should be...