iPhone® Application Development For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

Chapter 17. Finding Your Way

In This Chapter

• Using the map framework

• Specifying the location and zoom level of a map

• Annotating significant locations on the map

• Identifying the iPhone's current location

Up until now, the functionality I have been focusing on is the kind that enables you to do what you need to in a context, like get from the airport to your hotel, change money, tip appropriately, and so on. But there's also another side to context, and that is the iPhone can provide information about the context. Weather is one example, and a map is another.

Including the ability to display a map in MobileTravel411 became important as people began to realize the kinds of solutions that could be delivered on the iPhone. To many travelers, nothing brands you more as a tourist than unfolding a large map (except of course looking through a thick guidebook). In this chapter, I'll show you how to take advantage of the iPhone's built-in capability to display a map of virtually anywhere in the world, as well as determine your location and then indicate it in the map. As I said earlier, its awareness of your location is one of the things that enables you to develop a totally new kind of application and really differentiate an iPhone application from a desktop one.

Tip

For that reason, in this chapter, I return to the (more or less) step-by-step format I used in showing you how to build the ReturnMeTo application. Being able to build maps into your application is an important new feature in the iPhone ...