Hi! Call me JJ (aka halans).
I work on the web, in its trenches.
And Mapanui is just another pet project which managed to escape out of the labroom and onto the interweb. It's grown out of the interest for Microformats, jQuery and the need to build yet another mapping mashup, and inspired by the awesomeness of Westciv's XRAY and MRI bookmarklets.
Mapanui started out as a bookmarklet to locate an address on a map, without leaving the page. But it does use Microformatted address data to do so. I'm not parsing the whole page looking for an address, or something that looks like it. That means it is of limited use (to those smart websites that do use Microformats to describe their data, like Samsonite).
That's why I added the functionality to create a smart address card, your address information with the additional Microformats, to put on your about/contact page. That way other web applications, web services (like search engines and Mapanui), browsers or browser extensions can read your page and find your address more easily.
Optionally, you can add the Mapanui bookmarklet as a link to your page, which integrates a map without loosing screen real estate (only when the visitor clicks the link, the map appears), and without the need for a messing about with a complicated mapping API (programming interface).
Did I tell you this is all pretty much beta (read: "I'm lazy and dumb"™)? And it will be for a while I guess. So use at your own risk.
So, there you go. Hope you find it useful. Enjoy!
- Which browsers are supported by Mapanui?
- The latest and greatest! Sorry, no IE6 or older... I didn't bother.
- Looking at IE8 beta though, both Google Maps and WhereIs maps seem to have some problems.
- What are Microformats?
- Microformats.org: "Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards. Instead of throwing away what works today, microformats intend to solve simpler problems first by adapting to current behaviors and usage patterns (e.g. XHTML, blogging)."
- What is jQuery?
- jQuery.com: "The Write Less, Do More, JavaScript Library. jQuery is a fast, concise, JavaScript Library that simplifies how you traverse HTML documents, handle events, perform animations, and add Ajax interactions to your web pages."
- What happened to my browser's back button?
- Clicking the back button while having the Mapanui panel open will result in navigating through the Mapanui maps visited.
- After closing the Mapanui panel, the history (of Mapanui navigation) is still available in the browser's history. In essence, Mapanui breaks the back button functionality. Something to keep in mind.
