OT: Head's Up; Google Maps

[Randy Morgan]

Just a quick note to the helpful team on this forum...

Google has released the API for their Google Maps service, and from the
Yahoo discussion board dedicated to the service it's clear that:

1. Lots of people are playing with them (Google Maps are way cool) for
inclusion in their sites.

2. Google Maps do *not* like tables, and particularly don't like to be
in tables viewed in IE.

3. The example code provided by Google doesn't really address placement
of maps within a page. A straight copy/paste of the code into a layout
table will cause IE to report an error.

So, it seems likely that some of these folks will at some point find
their way over to the FP forums.

 

[Murray]

2. Google Maps do *not* like tables, and particularly don't like to be in

tables viewed in IE.

This sounds very strange to me. Can you link me to a discussion of the
reason for this?

 

[Randy Morgan]

Here's one of several (not very well-organized) threads that talk about
it. You may have to join the Yahoo group to view it, but here's what I
just copied from my address bar:

http://groups-beta.google.com/group...b3e4ea70615f0?q=table&rnum=1#ea8b3e4ea70615f0

I'll be interested to hear your thoughts on it. I played with it and
couldn't make it work; it's not a high priority for me so I haven't
delved into it.

Randy Morgan

 

[Murray]

One reply here suggests a cause -

**************
IE Doesn't like it that the JS is modifying the DOM in nested elements
(like DIVs or TABLEs). Take the JS out of your table, and put it at
the end of your doument and it should be better.
**************

Although I find that explanation strange. IE shouldn't care about such
things.

This reply suggests that there is no problem -

**************
mine works inside of a table...the div anyway..
http://www.maganation.com/_dev/_lcs/_iframe/_directions/google_map.html

**************

Looking at the markup on that page linked above, I can't see why it wouldn't
work under any *valid* markup conditions.

 

[Murray]

Reading the directions, I'm wondering if people are forgetting that the map
key is good for a single directory only?

so if you sign up for the URL http://www.mygooglemapssite.com/mysite, the
key you get will be good for all URLs in the
http://www.mygooglemapssite.com/mysite/ directory.

 

[Randy Morgan]

They are absolutely forgetting that the key is only good for a single
directory. You can get as many keys as you want, though, and one guy in
there had a clever way to dynamically build the JS call according to the
server that's being used.

As to the IE problems, that's the main reason I thought a head's up
might be worthwhile. Taking the JS out of the table works for some
people but not other (e.g., me). Having just the <div> tag inside the
table kept the map from displaying (but did eliminate the error message
from IE).

There are also suggestions about putting the JS at the bottom of the
page, using onLoad events, etc., but I haven't seen anything that works
for everybody. Google freely admits this is rev 1 of the API and that
it will change frequently, but I'm a little surprised that there seem to
be so many problems with it.

All of which makes me think that this forum will start to get some
attention. I'm kind of surprised it hasn't happened yet, because this
has been going on for a month.

Of course, one solution is to format pages with CSS and not tables...

Randy

 

[Murray]

Of course, one solution is to format pages with CSS and not tables...

I like this solution, and am still deeply suspicious of the "doesn't like
tables" bit.

 

[Randy Morgan]

I perhaps should have said "doesn't like the way people using tables are
implementing the code".

Randy Morgan

 

[Murray]

That's more sensible, and in fact, it most likely has nothing to do with
tables at all....