Widget Advertisements

Since launching Scribble Maps we have been struggling with a way to keep it completely free and also make money to support future development and on going hosting costs. Today we launched our solution, and that is we have added advertisements to widgets. We understand that this might be frustrating to some, however, we have also added the ability to remove them.

For a one time payment of $5 the ads for a particular widget will be completely removed for you and all other viewers of the widget. The payment is per map ID, so if you only use one widget on your site with constantly changing content, you will only need to pay once. Also if you pay to get ads removed for one map ID you could reuse that same map ID at a later date if the previous map is no longer relevant.

Your $5 contributions will not only remove ads on your publish widgets but will also help us to continue developing Scribble Maps in a meaningful way. Thank you all for your support, and thanks for using Scribble Maps!

Updates

Sorry for the lack of updates, we have been working on Scribble Maps. Since our last post Scribble Maps has been growing, and we are consistently amazed to see the new industries that are starting to find usages for Scribble Maps. Here are a couple of things we have been working on.

HTML5 Conversion

Scribble Maps is currently built using flash, we initially decided to use flash for its cross browser support and because of its performance. However, native browser technology has finally got to a point where we feel some what comfortable starting to transition the whole application to native technologies. We don't have an exact timeline for this, but the work has begun. Initially the first HTML5 roll out will be for the basic version of Scribble Maps and then later to the pro version. Our widget is already HTML5 compatible (it switches between the flash and js api accordingly).

Scribble Maps API

We are building an API that would allow Scribble Maps to be utilized on other websites, this goes hand in hand with our HTML5 conversion, the API will be fully a JS implementation. The initial functionality will be very basic at first allow for the retrieval of KML/GPX and basic access to our infrastructure.

Scribble Maps Classroom

One of our biggest users of Scribble Maps our teachers and students. We have had a variety of conversations with teachers, as well as some companies in the education space and we have started building a custom solution that uses Scribble Maps as a base for the education market.

Thanks all for your support and keep on Scribbling!

iPad Support - Upgrading your widgets

Scribble Maps widgets up to now have been completely flash based, with the rise of the iPad we wanted to make it so that any map you can make using Scribble Maps can be seen by anyone anywhere.

So what we have done is upgraded our widget so that we can have the best of both worlds, a flash based widget, and if flash isn't there, a fall back to a javascript version. In addition since the new widget uses iframes, instead of hard code, this allows it to be easily embed into services such as blogger more easily.

However, if you currently have an embed and would like to take advantage of the new system, you will need to upgrade your embed code. The easiest way is to load your map and then use the get widget code, alternatively you could do it manually, the new embed code looks like this:

<iframe width="550px" height="400px" src="http://widgets.scribblemaps.com/widget.html?id=mymapid&d=true&mt=false&z=true&l=false&p=true" frameborder="0" style="border: none; margin: 0; padding: 0"></iframe>

where mymapid is replace with your own mapID. Just like the old widget, this widget also has support for rendering KML directly by setting the kml parameter.

There is a caveat, we have some custom features, such as line styling, that will not be properly rendered out in the JavaScript version, however, we will constantly be upgrading the JavaScript widget to get it as close as possible to the flash based widget as we can. If you would like to see how your map will look in the JS widget, you can load it using our mobile viewer at http://m.scribblemaps.com.

We are very excited about this, and look forward to more of your creations.

Happy Mapping!

40k Maps, and performance

We are rapidly closing in on 40k maps, thanks to all of you. With the increased usage of Scribble Maps we have found that a few of the things we built at the start were not designed to sustain this many files, so over the next couple days we are going to be doing some work on Scribble Maps, you can still make maps, and your widgets will still work, there just may be intermittent down times and some latency from the site. We apologize for any inconvenience as we work on some things to better support the future of Scribble Maps.

Wordpress Plugin

We have recently developed a Wordpress plugin for Scribble Maps. This convenient plugin allows you to embed maps you have created with Scribble Maps directly into your wordpress blog. It also has the added functionality of being able to load and render any KML from a URL. We would love to hear your feedback and also how we can make this more useful for you. You can get the plugin at

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/scribble-maps-kml-embed/

Stayed tuned, we also have some more updates coming down the line as well.

Paint Bucket, Text Markers, SHP, and Updates

Sorry for the lack of updates, we have been very busy the last two months both adding features as well as improving some behind the scenes technical stuff. One of the big features we added, if you haven't discovered it already, is a paint bucket. This allows you to scribble out a shape and then fill it with a color of your choosing. This functionality is completely compatible with Google Maps, so any filled shape should show up properly in both Google Maps and Google Earth.

There is also a hidden functionality of the paint bucket tool and that is it also works on borders/lines. Meaning you can use the paint bucket tool to change the color of the outline of a polygon, or just to change the color of an already existing line.



We have also added the ability to create Text Markers without the white border/background, when creating a Text Marker just hit the no border check box.

We have also been diligently working on improving support for SHP files in Scribble Maps Pro, this has turned out to be much more difficult then we expected, but we are making some progress.

We have a lot in the pipeline and you have all been very helpful by providing us great feedback.

Legends in Scribble Maps

We have added the ability to add legends in Scribble Maps. Legends can be shown in both the widget, and also added to an image for download. We are really excited about this, and hopefully this replaces the need to make legends by manually drawing them on the map. This also lets you create more complex maps.



Note: The pro legend creator has the ability to pick line types.