RIA with mapping

Internet applications are evolving to RIA (Rich Internet Applications) along with what users and our customers are expecting. I started working with Flex 1.5 to help one of Seisan's customers replace their very cumbersome back-end order entry system. Since that time, I have come to adopt the Adobe Flex technology and in a very short period of time have been able to develop some very easy to use interactive interfaces. Flex allows me to avoid the "browser compatibility" issue and leave it to Adobe.

There is a growing number of mapping platforms available for use with Flex/Flash. Since the mapping applications are so graphical using them in an RIA fashion just makes sense. Yahoo had lead the charge with Yahoo Maps Flex 1.5 API - Unfortunately they jumped on too early and didn't have the skills to roll it over to Flex 2.0 / ActionScript 3.0 and have opted for AJAX. I fully expect they will get with the program and provide Flex 2.0.

Our development team at Seisan is extremely excited by our friends at MapQuest coming on strong with not only fantastic new features in their API 5.x for AJAX but they've included a Flex/Flash API. They have also thought about the huge developer community and created combo AJAX & Flex Hybrid - FUJAX as the guys at MapQuest call it. You get the performance of the Flash display routines with the ability to use javascript API calls. Which will make it very easy for users to switch to MapQuest when the free Google Maps based application become too cluttered with ads to be usable.

I will be providing more details and sample code for the MapQuest AS3 API in the coming weeks. So keep a look out and drop me a line with any questions.

Speaking of Google, if you want to have Google in Flash/Flex I recommend you check out Advanced Flash Components. They have GMap component which from the demonstration looks pretty nice, not sure if it support all the Google Map features. It's worth checking out and I will likely report on that soon.

ESRI ArcWeb does Flex - check out this article. This is something I have on my radar to check out.

This was just a quick intro into some of the things I will be blogging about, please let me know of anything I have missed - especially in the Flex/Flash world that relates to LBS or GIS.

Chuck Durham
charles.durham@seisan.com