Adobe Flash in cartography: the Kuzbass in the palm project

After the launch of the Google Maps map service, the technology using the Ajax method temporarily eclipsed other technologies for representing geographical maps on the Internet. Today I want to talk about Adobe Flash and its use in my own project "Kuzbass in the palm of your hand."

While studying at the graduate school of Kemerovo State University, in 2005 I faced the problem of publishing maps created in the Mapinfo Professional program. The MapXtreme product offered by this manufacturer, which makes it possible to publish maps on the Internet on a dedicated map server, turned out to be too complicated as it required programming skills. At that moment I needed a simple utility that allows you to convert maps into a format displayed by the browser. We had to choose from two formats: SVG and Flash .
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After a long search, I got a free utility Geoclip builder : a simple library for Mapinfo Professional, which allows you to generate maps in a flash-movie. Having rejoiced at the find, I sent a letter to the author with gratitude. What was my surprise when, in a reply letter, I was offered to test something completely different - Geoclip Solo . This is a separate application that allows you to get a cartographic flash-video from an entire album of maps. For participating in the development of the project (Russian translation, beta testing) Geoclip Solo got me for free for educational purposes.

So, the “ Kuzbass on the palm ” project is based on flash - an interactive map with several graphic layers (water resources, transport communications, administrative structure) plus a statistical reference book.

Advantages of using flash:
- the presence of the Flash Player plugin on most PCs of Internet users (as opposed to, say, SVG), see “ Adobe - Flash Player Statistics ”;
- the ability to create non-online solutions.

Disadvantages of using flash:
- Modern versions of Flash Player demanding on PC resources;
- the complexity of indexing flash-videos by search robots.