[Mapserver-users] New Technology

[Dave McIlhagga]

MapServer Users,

Leading up to the MapServer User Meeting in Minnesota, I'd like to take 
a moment to introduce some brand new technology to the community that we 
have been working on over the past 9 months, and are preparing for 
release (open source of course!) at the beginning of June.

Chameleon is PHP & MapServer based technology that allows for the 
deployment of web mapping applications through the simple use of 
"Widgets" which are HTML-like tags that identify through a series of 
parameters the specific application behaviour for a given widget.  So 
for instance if you try the URL I've included below, you'll see this 
application includes map, keymap, fullextent, zoomin, zoomout, scalebar 
and measure widgets plus several others.  This only represents a small 
subset of the widgets that will be available in the initial release of 
Chameleon.  In addition, an API will be available for the development of 
new PHP widgets that can be developed for Chameleon.

For us this is the most exciting technology that we feel we will be 
releasing since the original PHP/MapScript was released to the MapServer 
community three years ago.  Chameleon runs on MapServer 4.0 with both 
being released prior to the MapServer User Meeting in Minnesota.  Look 
for much more information on Chameleon in the upcoming weeks.

If you'd like to try out an application of Chameleon, here's an 
application showing the location of the upcoming MapServer User Meeting 
in Minnesota:

http://www.mapsherpa.com/mum/

We are very keen to get feedback on how this works in a variety of 
browsers and operating systems.  We have done a good degree of testing 
in many common environments, but I'm sure there will be quirks in others 
so please let us know if you have any trouble.

I'll send a follow-on note to the community when Chameleon 1.0 will be 
available to the community.  One final note -- we would like to 
acknowledge the funding support provided by GeoConnections of Natural 
Resources Canada for the development of Chameleon that is the base for 
their Configurable Web Mapping Client Component (CWC2) service.  You 
will be hearing much more about this at the MapServer User Meeting.

Enjoy!

Dave
-- 
Dave McIlhagga
President, DM Solutions Group

http://www.dmsolutions.ca
EMail : mcilhagga at dmsolutions.ca
Phone : 613-565-5056 x15
Fax : 613-565-0925