Yahoo! has been promoting two new Yahoo! Maps APIs for AJAX and Flash that webmasters can work with to publish customized maps on their websites. The Yahoo! Maps team says each API has features that may cause one to “geek out.”
All Yahoo!’s syndicated APIs include maps with features that are “draggable, pannable, zoomable and customizable.” Regular, satellite, and hybrid views are available on the APIs as well as built-in geocoding, customizable overlays, map markers and information windows.
Features of the Yahoo! Maps AJAX API:
Support for custom overlays at YGeoPoints that move with the map or YCoordPoint coordinates that hover over the map allows placement of HTML elements on the map
Extension of Overlay class including transition states for markers on the map, expand open/close, hide, unhide, change image and smart window border color control
Built in “add marker by address” functionality without the need to know latitude/longitude
Create custom dynamic maps with XML data in GeoRSS format
Upgraded pan & zoom controls and a new map Navigator widget
Integrated keyboard shortcuts
Extended supported events list, supporting custom context and multiple callbacks registration, as well as YGeoPoint return for click type events
Enabled by default auto resize with % width/height container size definition
An advanced built-in logger to help you debug complex Maps implementations
Improved memory management that is nearly leak-free in all browsers
Features of the Yahoo! Maps Flash APIs:
Available in JS, Flash and Flex.
Easy drop-in code or components
Most methods including changing location, zoom level, map view type, adding widgets (Navigator, Satellite Control) and panning can be done with just a few lines of code
Improvements to panning and zooming
Simple overlays let you add dynamic data, including Live Traffic and Yahoo! Local Search results
