Projections
Windows
Hello to you all
!
I'm going to show you a new application for displaying maps generated by
MapServer in a web browser (Internet Explorer 5.5 and upwards, or Mozilla 1.3
and upwards). As with all new applications, the first example is the "Hello
World" program
.
It shows a map of the world in a window inside the browser (for the screenshot
presentation the browser's menu and status bars have been left out). This window
behaves exactly like a regular desktop window: it can be moved,
,
resized
,
and even maximized and minimized by the two rightmost buttons in the
title bar.
A window can send requests to a server and display the results, either from a
command button, or after an event like resizing. When a request is being
processed by the server, the leftmost button turns red
.
This button also has a submenu, showing all windows in the system
.
At this moment of course there is only one window.
This window is *not* a regular browser popup window: it is a collection of HTML
elements within the main window (mainly SPAN and DIV) with events defined on
them. The window knows its own dimensions, so after a resize it can send a new
map request to the server with the new dimensions as parameters. The server
will compute a map that exactly fits in the window
.