[OpenLayers-Users] Automatic links the Yahoo way

[Jochen Topf]

On Wed, Sep 12, 2007 at 08:57:35AM -0500, Lance Dyas wrote:
> Jochen Topf wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 11, 2007 at 06:07:43PM -0700, mcarsel wrote:
> >   
> >> Has anyone implemented a way to automatically update the url in openlayers
> >> every time a user zooms or pans similar to the way Yahoo does it? 
> >> Sample here: 
> >> http://maps.yahoo.com/beta/#mvt=m&trf=0&lon=-94.350586&lat=38.169114&mag=14
> >> http://maps.yahoo.com/beta/#mvt=m&trf=0&lon=-94.350586&lat=38.169114&mag=14  
> >>
> >> I saw a ticket about 4 months ago (#723) that proposed this as a new feature
> >> in openlayers, but didn't see anything come of it.
> >>
> >> Permalinks are somewhat useful, but automatic url update like the way Yahoo
> >> does it would be much better.  
> >>     
> >
> > Cool idea. I don't think it should be part of OpenLayers itself, though.
> >   
> Why? part of the point of doing it is that we can re-enable the browser
> back button and make bookmarking the natural way without artificial
> behaviors on the users part ... and that is a good thing it means no 
> learning
> new stuff to use your web map

If this is in OpenLayers itself, it would have to understand the URL.
But it can't really do that. Currently I am the one interpreting the
lat, lon, zoom coordinates and if I want to rename them or have
different ones for a different projection or additional parameters for
layer or whatever, I can do that. If the functionality would be in OL,
how would it do that? Maybe we can find a way of doing that properly.
Any suggestions?

> > It can easly be done outside the core. I have implemented it quickly at
> > http://geo.topf.org/map/indexhash.html and it seems to work. 
> 
> You only did part of it... you need a timer that checks when the user 
> goes back or forward
> or manually changes the hash that the map responds to it

Ok, I wasn't aware of that functionality. I'll have a look at it. I am
not convinced it is that useful, but I agree that it is quite cool. :-)

Jochen
-- 
Jochen Topf  jochen at remote.org  http://www.remote.org/jochen/  +49-721-388298