My Goal
I would like to create pushpin collections for sharing the answers to some problems in celestial navigation with my readers. I would like them to be able to create pushpin collections to show their answers to the problems so they can say "is this right what did I do wrong " Pushpin collections seem to be the simplest and most straightforward way for communicating. The users don't have to write or use any code. But I don't know how to create collections of pushpins by specifying lat/long.
Has anyone else here confronted this issue Do you have any advice on a simple (minimal development effort) solution
My problem
- Local.live.com does not have a way to create pushpins with lat/long as input
- The VirtualEarth SDK does not include any methods for creating collections or adding pins to them.
- Using local.live.com to center the map at a given lat/long (using cp=), then placing a pin in a collection at that point is not reliable -- if the browser window is not big enough, and there is a scrollbar, the pin does not go to the lat/long used in the URL.
Is there any hope of local.live.com itself creating a way to create pushpins at a given lat/long Is there any hope of the development team exposing some methods we can use to replicate the interactive "save pushpin to collection" features at local.live.com
My workaround
So far, my solution has been to create a template that anyone can use to create a map page with the pushpins where they want them, by lat/long. But they do have to copy/paste/modify some javascript in an html file to do it (http://rpmhome.net/siliconsea/SampleDisplay.htm)
Any advice is appreciated!
Interactively creating/adding to pushpin collections
penninha
That might do the trick -- if I saved the GeoRSS file on my website, so users could share GeoRSS files. And created a server so people could call up other peoples GeoRSS pushpin collections.
That would mean a bunch of coding for me. There are several reasons I don't want to do that.
But, principally, I imagine the developers will someday add something to the SDK so developers can work with pushpin collections directly -- open a new one (returns collection id), open an old one (returns collection id), add a bunch of pushpins to a collection (if you are logged in). Or else add the lat/long ability to local.live.com so I won't have to write any code at all, and can dump the little bit of code I already wrote.
Just wishful thinking!
adi151478
Why not do #3, but in VE instead of WLL
In other words, allow the user to enter a Lat/Long, set the map to that new LatLong, and then place a pushpin at the center of the map Of course, you don't have to move the map...you could just place the pin there.
You could then store your pins in an array as they are created, and then dump them to a GeoRSS file or any other storage you want. When the user wants to call up previous pushpins, you just add the GeoRSS file back in as a layer.
Does that solve the problem
Toolmaker
Have you looked into Windows Live Local collections and/or GeoRSS collections With the first, the collection data is stored on the local.live domain or somewhere similar; the latter option you'd end up creating an interface to either dynamically create GeoRSS files and store them on your site or allow users to upload their own to a specified directory and then enumerate those on your UI as selectable layers.
If the goal is zero coding knowledge from the user base (including not worrying about having them properly format a GeoRSS file) then the WLL collections would be a good fit. Otherwise you'll end up rolling your own flavor of that functionality -- which is not impossible, by any stretch -- just that you have many more programming considerations in terms of security.
Here is good SDK fodder on the Layer side of the VE World: http://dev.live.com/virtualearth/sdk/Ref/HTML/WorkingWithLayers.htm
Hope that helps,
Jared