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Mapbox GL for the Web

mapbox.com

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Re: Mapbox GL for the Web

#2

Post by lobster_johnson »

This looks great, although on first glance seems that the new GL implementation is a new library, not an extension of Leaflet.

I think that's a mistake — Leaflet is solid and is the foundation on which a lot of extensions are built, to the point where my impression is that it's pretty much the de facto JS-based map widget these days.

While the new library looks decent, I don't see the point of creating a brand new library rather than extending Leaflet, other than to force clients to couple tightly to Mapbox's API, tile server etc.

Re: Mapbox GL for the Web

#3

Post by mourner »

lobster_johnson wrote: post #2

This looks great, although on first glance seems that the new GL implementation is a new library, not an extension of Leaflet. I think that's a mistake — Leaflet is solid and is the foundation on which a lot of extensions are built, to the point where my impression is that it's pretty much the de facto JS-based map widget these days. While the new library looks decent, I don't see the point of creating a brand new li…

Leaflet creator here, worked on both libraries.

It makes a lot of sense because this library is vastly different from usual slippy maps — fluid continuous zoom & rotation, extremely powerful visualization and interactivity potential, no DOM constraints — fitting it into the Leaflet API which was designed for simple image tile-based maps would be very limiting.

On the other hand, Mapbox GL JS is a very complicated technology under the hood, it is much heavier, with more code, lots of algorithms, serious backend technology to support it etc. So there's a place for both libraries — Leaflet remaining the go-to super-simple, friendly and lightweight library for most maps, while GL JS being an experimental ground for maps of the future with unlimited potential.

Also, Mapbox GL JS + Leaflet integration plugin is coming soon. Stay tuned :)

Re: Mapbox GL for the Web

#4

Post by underbluewaters »

This is really impressive. It's clear someone really spent a lot of time making the controls feel nice and fluid. I'd love to know more about how vector tiles are streamed to the client, and how I could do similar streaming of my own data.

Re: Mapbox GL for the Web

#7

Post by mourner »

underbluewaters wrote: post #4

This is really impressive. It's clear someone really spent a lot of time making the controls feel nice and fluid. I'd love to know more about how vector tiles are streamed to the client, and how I could do similar streaming of my own data.

The data is loaded from server as 512x512 protobuf tiles (an efficient binary format) in a Web Worker and parsed/processed there.

Re: Mapbox GL for the Web

#9

Post by alex_duf »

mourner wrote: post #3
lobster_johnson wrote: post #2

This looks great, although on first glance seems that the new GL implementation is a new library, not an extension of Leaflet. I think that's a mistake — Leaflet is solid and is the foundation on which a lot of extensions are built, to the point where my impression is that it's pretty much the de facto JS-based map widget these days. While the new library looks decent, I don't see the point of creating a brand new li…

Leaflet creator here, worked on both libraries. It makes a lot of sense because this library is vastly different from usual slippy maps — fluid continuous zoom & rotation, extremely powerful visualization and interactivity potential, no DOM constraints — fitting it into the Leaflet API which was designed for simple image tile-based maps would be very limiting. On the other hand, Mapbox GL JS is a very complicated tec…

That's some serious good news here.
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