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ViaWindowsLive on Via Virtual Earth Blog
The new ViaWindowsLive community site has launched and features not only a definitive set of resources on all Live Services from Microsoft but also a special section on Virtual Earth including a new site gallery for you to upload your sites, new articles on Version 6, including getting started guide, an interactive quick guide, location finder and more. Subscribe to the VWL aggregated blog to stay in touch with everything Live Services related. Find all the great content from this site and much, much more. Explore how other Live Services can compliment Virtual Earth and your applications.
Version 5 URL changed - Error: 'VEMap' is undefined on Via Virtual Earth Blog
It has been reported that the old url to access the Version5 javascript for Virtual Earth no longer works. This is effecting sites worldwide.
The correct way to reference the Version 5 javascript is:
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://dev.virtualearth.net/mapcontrol/mapcontrol.ashx?v=5"></script>
If you have been effected a forum thread has been started here
Silverlight Virtual Earth viewer on Via Virtual Earth Blog
With the launch of silverlight yesterday I was digging around and found this viewer for Virtual Earth by Greg Schechter. It does use the 1.1 alpha of silverlight. It gives some interesting ideas for where Virtual Earth could be headed. Certainly the demo of the performance of silverlight compared to javascript for processing showed a significant increase. This could be very useful.
And of course on the gamer front check this out by Andy Beaulieu and shoot down some UFO's over Birdseye images.
John.
So much new Virtual Earth Imagery Worldwide. on Via Virtual Earth Blog
I subscribe to all the VE blogs and recently the posts about updated imagery has been more and more frequent.
The latest is here and for myself downunder we saw three updates, Canberra, Newcastle and Uluru:
Derek Chan posts 3 Articles in a month! on Via Virtual Earth Blog
A big thank you to the efforts of Derek Chan who posted his third VE article today (he actually had it ready weeks ago but had to wait for Mr Bottleneck here at VVE ;) )
The 3 articles are all relivant to Version 5 of Virtual Earth and deal with the Mini Map, debugging javascript and now custom pins in routes.
All these can now be found in our articles section.
If you have something to contribute send us an email.
John (The bottleneck)
How I Built the Where Was Dr. Neil Page RSS
This article is written for an old version of the Virtual Earth platform. While still available for reference purposes, it is unlikely to work if implemented.
The simple web page Where Was Dr. Neil demonstrates using Virtual Earth to display a set of location data that is associated with dates. The final result can be seen at http://www.viavirtualearth.com/MyVirtualEarth/WhereWasDrNeil.aspx.
The data source is a simple XML file containing a set of locations. The file is located at http://www.viavirtualearth.com/MyVirtualEarth/WhereDates.xml.
<Where>
<Date>Jan 1 2005</Date>
<Lat>-33.75415</Lat>
<Lon>151.30216</Lon>
<Name>Sydney</Name>
</Where>Each Where location contains the date I arrived at that location, the latitude and longitude of the location and a name for that location.
I started by putting the HTML and client side script together. I combined a client side map control and HTML controls with server side ASP.NET controls.
<%@ Page language="c#" Codebehind="WhereWasDrNeil.aspx.cs" AutoEventWireup="false" Inherits="MyVirtualEarth.WhereWasDrNeil" %>
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" >
<html>
<head>
<title>WhereWasDrNeil</title>
<script src="/ViaVirtualEarth/Portals/0/MapControl.js"></script>
<script>
var map = null;
function OnPageLoad()
{
map = new VE_MapControl(0.0, 0.0, 2,
'r', "absolute", 300, 10, 700, 800);
document.body.appendChild(map.element);
UpdateMap();
}
function UpdateMap()
{
var lat = document.getElementById("LatLabel");
var lon = document.getElementById("LonLabel");
map.SetCenterAndZoom(lat.innerText, lon.innerText, 14);
}
</script>
</head>
<body onLoad="OnPageLoad()" MS_POSITIONING="GridLayout">
<form id="Form1" method="post" runat="server">
<asp:Calendar id="whereCalendar" style="Z-INDEX: 101; LEFT: 16px; POSITION: absolute; TOP: 264px" runat="server" Height="184px" Width="104px"></asp:Calendar>
<asp:Label id="LonLabel" style="Z-INDEX: 107; LEFT: 40px; POSITION: absolute; TOP: 616px" runat="server" Width="208px">
0.0
</asp:Label>
<asp:Label id="LatLabel" style="Z-INDEX: 106; LEFT: 40px; POSITION: absolute; TOP: 584px" runat="server" Width="208px">
0.0
</asp:Label>
<asp:Label id="Label1" style="Z-INDEX: 102; LEFT: 24px; POSITION: absolute; TOP: 208px" runat="server" Width="232px">
Select a date to find out where Dr. Neil was that day.
</asp:Label>
<asp:Image id="Image1" style="Z-INDEX: 103; LEFT: 24px; POSITION: absolute; TOP: 16px" runat="server" Height="186px" Width="227px" ImageUrl="images/whereis.jpg"></asp:Image>
<asp:Label id="selectedDateLabel" style="Z-INDEX: 104; LEFT: 32px; POSITION: absolute; TOP: 504px" runat="server" Width="216px">
No date selected
</asp:Label>
<asp:Label id="LocationLabel" style="Z-INDEX: 105; LEFT: 32px; POSITION: absolute; TOP: 544px" runat="server" Width="208px">
Where?
</asp:Label>
<input type="button" value="Show On Map" style="Z-INDEX: 108; LEFT: 32px; WIDTH: 208px; POSITION: absolute; TOP: 656px; HEIGHT: 28px" onclick="UpdateMap()">
</form>
</body>
</html>I have represented the location information in C# with a class:
private class Where
{
public Where()
{
date = DateTime.MinValue;
lat = string.Empty;
lon = string.Empty;
name = string.Empty;
}
public DateTime date;
public string lat;
public string lon;
public string name;
}Then given an XmlNode I can extract an instance of the Where class in code like this.
private Where ExtractInfo(XmlNode whereNode)
{
Where where = new Where();
foreach(XmlNode info in whereNode.ChildNodes)
{
switch(info.Name)
{
case "Date":
where.date = DateTime.Parse(info.InnerXml);
break;
case "Name":
where.name = info.InnerXml;
break;
case "Lat":
where.lat = info.InnerXml;
break;
case "Lon":
where.lon = info.InnerXml;
break;
}
}
return where;
}
I then use this method to find my location on a selected date from an xml file in the following method.
private Where GetWhereAtDateFromFile(DateTime date, string filePath)
{
Where whereAtDate = new Where();
XmlDocument whereDates = new XmlDocument();
whereDates.Load(filePath);
XmlNodeList whereNodes = whereDates.DocumentElement.ChildNodes;
foreach(XmlNode whereNode in whereNodes)
{
Where where = ExtractInfo(whereNode);
if (where.date > date)
{
break;
}
whereAtDate = where;
}
return whereAtDate;
}This GetWhereAtDateFromFile method can then be called to populate the labels on the Web Form with the location name, the latitude and longitude fields.
private void GetWhere(DateTime date)
{
string filePath = this.Request.PhysicalApplicationPath + "WhereDates.xml";
Where whereAtDate = GetWhereAtDateFromFile(date, filePath);
LocationLabel.Text = whereAtDate.name;
LatLabel.Text = whereAtDate.lat;
LonLabel.Text = whereAtDate.lon;
}
Finally I call this GetWhere method from the Calendar control�s SelectionChanged event handler.
private void whereCalendar_SelectionChanged(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
DateTime date = whereCalendar.SelectedDate;
if (date < DateTime.Now)
{
selectedDateLabel.Text = date.ToShortDateString();
GetWhere(date);
}
else
{
selectedDateLabel.Text = "Select a date before today!";
LatLabel.Text = "0.0";
LonLabel.Text = "0.0";
}
}