GSS – Style your web maps with CSS client side

May 22, 2009 2 Comments

As Steve pointed out, this is does deserve two exclamation points!!

Just like CSS for styling web pages, GSS is a specification for designing maps. Adapted for dynamic data sources, GSS can define changing geographic elements, display multiple datasets, and even respond to contextual tags like “condition:poor”.

Very tasty!  Just look at this simple GSS and how you can render maps on the client.

body: {
fillStyle: "#fff",
lineWidth: 0,
},

node: {
fillStyle: "#ddd",
strokeStyle: "#090",
lineWidth: 0,
radius: 1
},

way: {
strokeStyle: function() {
return "rgba(1,1,1,0.7)"
//return color_from_string(this.user)
},
strokeStyle: "#ccc",
lineWidth: 3
},

leisure: {
fillStyle: "#2a2",
lineWidth: 3,
strokeStyle: "#181"
}

Previous conversation about styling GIS data.

Filed under GIS Tagged with , , , , ,

About James Fee
Chief Evangelist for WeoGeo.com

2 Responses to GSS – Style your web maps with CSS client side

  1. Brian Timoney says:
    May 22, 2009 at 3:28 pm

    James:

    Client-side CSS is not necessarily the big story here. The story is whether the HTML5 Canvas element will be the de facto vector mapping/animation standard moving forward.

    Stop me if you’ve heard this, but SVG was the perennial “next big thing” that, because of the lack of native support on IE, never got traction.

    Looking forward, could this be where the mobile browsing preferences dictate the desktop browsing standards? In other words, if Google with Android and Apple with the iPhone decide no Flash and no Silverlight on their phones, then the developer momentum behind HTML5 will be such that the backsplash into the desktop world would naturally follow?

    I dunno. I do know I have brats to eat, interleague play, the Nuggets punking the Lakers, and other assorted holiday weekend activities to attend to.

    Brian

  2. James Fee says:
    May 22, 2009 at 3:46 pm

    Brian: if you can convince Mozilla to drop Gecko and move to WebKit, then we can talk.