OpenLayers 2.10 Beginners Guide Book Review

A man is out driving in unfamiliar countryside. Inevitably he gets lost, so he pulls over to ask a local farmer for directions. "Oh no", says the farmer, "I wouldn't start from here".

It's an old joke (and not a very funny one), but one that springs to mind when people ask certain questions on mailing lists. Someone with very little computing experience will appear on the OpenLayers mailing list (or IRC) and say "How do I put a map on my web page?". My answer would be "Well, I wouldn't start from here".

First, I'd say, learn programming using a nice friendly language - python perhaps. Then get a basic understanding of how client-server systems work, and how the web is implemented via the HTTP protocol. Then follow the 20-something year evolution of HTML - from its humble beginnings through to its happy marriage with CSS and their successful menage-a-trois together with Javascript. Ignore its affair with Java - that was a moment of crazed passion, and Java is now out of the HTML/browser party and busily running the "enterprisey" affairs of corporations.

With a knowledge of HTTP, HTML, CSS and Javascript, you are ready to put maps on your web pages. And I'd choose OpenLayers to do it.

Erik Hazzard's book, "OpenLayers 2.10 Beginner's Guide", published by Packt Publishing, is designed to get people with very little computing experience all the way through that process to the point of quite complex map production. He has to cover everything, and does so pretty well (although I'm not sure about his exposition on Object-oriented programming). Although he doesn't teach programming, he encourages users to cut-and-paste code and then experiment.

The sample chapter will show you how the book works - simple explanations, example code, and open-ended questions and mini-assignments. The Firebug debugger is introduced early on in the book, and I think this is a great idea. Firebug didn't take long to repay me the time I took to grok what it could do. Erik sprinkles it liberally on the examples, since interactive inspection of a program is a great way to really see what it's doing.

Inevitably with a book like this, large chunks of its 372 pages will be similar to dumps of the API documentation from the OpenLayers web site. Erik has fleshed out a lot of the terse API information to include fuller examples to make the book more than just that - I can imagine hardcopies of this book with a multitude of flapping yellow sticky notes for their owners to get rapid access to useful pages. Packt Publishing will sell you the PDF version for those who like to search, and the paper version for those who like to stick.

By the end of the book you should have the knowledge to understand how the sample Flickr map application developed in the last chapter works, and you'll also have a handy reference to a large percentage of the features of OpenLayers. The one glaring omission is that there is no mention of the OpenLayers "Popup" class, typically used for "info-balloons" when clicking on map features. But if you can work through the book, then it should be no problem to work out how to use them from the API documentation.

There seem to be very few books on OpenLayers on the market at the moment, so if you want to make maps and would like a high-quality step-by-step guide to it, then this is the book for you.

Note that OpenLayers, like all web technologies is evolving fast, so watch out for updates and get the latest version of the book. A recent OpenLayers hackfest concentrated on developing functionality for mobile devices, so expect to see more OpenLayers applications for your smartphone soon. With Google insisting on presenting advertising along with their map images, it might be a good time to switch to OpenStreetMap for your map background and OpenLayers for your mapping client.

Barry


Note: I was provided with a PDF copy of the book for review, and I have no connection with the author or publisher.