Map Scripting

In the past I’ve been pretty harsh on the mapping trailblazer, MapQuest. I called them copycats and said they are grasping for relevance. While they aren’t exactly at the top of their game, they’re still trying, and in some cases succeeding.

The local interface to add pre-selected types of markers is one of those highlights. It’s great–you can find post offices, parking, gas stations and plenty more. And it’s fast. The part that’s really neat, which shows in the above screenshot, is how MapQuest handles markers that would ordinarily show up too close to each other.

Overlapped and clumped together markers are not very useful without zooming in. MapQuest creates a new type of marker to represent two or more markers. Then, you can click the special icon to zoom in automatically. It makes for a cleaner view, while making it obvious where they have aggregated results.

I’ll probably use a similar system to upgrade my “Where I’m Writing” feature on the site. The area around my house is starting to look clumpy. It shocks me to heap praise upon MapQuest, but this is well done. I’d like to see a tool for something like this incorporated into their API.