Map-Fu, your personal Ninja for Web-Mapping

[percy]

We are delighted to announce a new open source framework for
web-mapping, your personal Ninja of web-mapping, ladies and gentlemen, it's:

*Map-Fu*

Available for download, contribution of code, or reporting of bugs at
our not-so-secret location on sourceforge:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/map-fu/

It features a true object-oriented PHP-Mapscript backend, with a variety 
of classes and interfaces, ease of extensibility, and other 
configuration zoink-zoink.

On the front end is a fat Javascript client, using XMLHttpRequest to
communicate with the server for updating the map and map-related data.
It employs JSON for messaging and goes for a Web 2.0 feel. Some features
on the front-end include pop-up tabs for reference map, legend, map
information and query results. We try to maximize screen area for the
map, since that's what we are interested in visually!

Based on Minnesota Mapserver (of course) and PostGIS, we developed this
interface to satisfy actual needs of clients for creating web-mapping
applications that served SPECIFIC needs and required SPECIFIC tools.

Some production sites that are using the Map-Fu or related codebase
(formerly known as YAMI (Yet Another Map Interface)):

http://glaciers.us - A database of glacier change in the Western US,
including a linked assets database of aerial and oblique photos from the
last century

http://www.oregongeology.com/sub/ogdc/index.htm - The most up-to-date
geology compilation for Oregon, soon to be used for other states!

http://oscdl.research.pdx.edu/ - Oregon Sustainable
Communities Digital Library, a temporal database of regional planning
for the Portland Metro area (ten years of regional planning data, plus
links to documents tied to spatial objects)

We look forward to collaborating with a larger group of developers, and
receiving feedback on our efforts! We're interested in incorporating the
OpenLayers interface, and "through the web" feature editing via WFS-T.

In the current vacuum of viable enterprise GIS solutions, we see this
as a ripe time for rapid development!

The Map-Fu development team,
Morgan, Cris, Tim, Percy & Will
Portland State University
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