
284 GOOGLE APPS HACKS
For more control over what your map does and how it appears, you can use the Google Maps API
(Application Programming Interface). In addition to understanding basic HTML, you’ll need to know
some JavaScript.
To get started with the Google Maps API, head over to http://code.google.com/apis/maps/ and click
on “Sign up for a Google Maps API key.” Read and agree to the terms of service (if you do agree), enter
your home page address, and click Generate API Key. Not only will you get your key now—don’t forget
to make a copy of it for future use—but Google also offers you some sample map code to begin with.
Let’s analyze the code, shown here:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
<title>Google Maps JavaScript API Example</title>
<script
src="http://maps.google.com/maps?file=api&v=2&key=
YOUR-KEY"
type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
//<![CDATA[
function load() {
if (GBrowserIsCompatible()) {
var map = new GMap2(document.getElementById("map"));
map.setCenter(new GLatLng(37.4419, -122.1419), 13);
}
}
//]]>
The HTML and Cascading Stylesheet les
behind the sample home page