Question concerning google earth placemark balloons - styles

Does anybody know a way of styling a google earth placemark balloon differently than the original one looks like? i am not talking about the kml data i put into the balloon. i know how to style this. I am talking about the bubble itself, I would like to have it lesser rounded and with a far lesser padding. Also, i'd like to have it closer to the placemark icon. how can i realize this?

Unfortunately, no - the basic style of the balloon is determined by the application and there is no exposed way to alter it. However, you could use image based screen overlays rather than balloons if stylistic concerns are your priority.

Related

Making custom, fictional maps with D3.js

I'm kicking around an idea for a side project and am looking for advice on which direction to go in terms of technology. I've done some research already, but am still fairly confused as to what the realistic options are.
I'd like to make an interactive map based on a fictional world (think Middle Earth), including a timeline filter and a details section for additional information on an event or location.
Desired Features:
map on the left
details pane on the right
timeline slider/filter at bottom
Territories
color for political affiliation
displays details in details pane
labels
labels for cities
Hurdles:
Get a clean map image to work with
Map image into intermediate format (svg, geojson, topojson?)
Display map on webpage, style map, add animations, etc
Technologies
SVG
I'm pretty sure I could code all of this in SVG using events and boundaries. I've already been able to create SVG Paths from the image using GIMP, so converting the map into an SVG file seems plausible.
The issue with doing it this way is I would end up doing all the work the hard way when there seems to be lots of frameworks for this kind of thing already.
Kartograph
La Bella Italia is a very nice example and would serve as a good starting point. I love the trade route animations and the border styling with the glow filters.
The bonus here is that I know I can make an svg map, which is all this would need to get up and running.
My issue here is it doesn't seem like Kartograph is as rich of a platform as D3.js. I'm not sure if I can double dip and link some D3 stuff with the kartograph events. If I could, that might be the solution.
D3.js
The sliders, animations(hover and selection), and topojson seem like they would be perfect. But the main issue I have here is getting my image converted into a GeoJson format. From what I can tell these formats are strictly for Real World maps, using longitude/latitude.
So there you have it! I'm hoping there is some good news on how I might convert my map image into topojson so I can enjoy the benefits of D3.js. If not, I suppose I could just try kartograph and wire the events up with D3 controls.
Thoughts?
I'm currently writing my master thesis and I have the same topic like you had these days. I called my project Arda Maps. Feel free to ask me anything if have techonology questions.
I'm using the following frameworks/tools in my project:
QGIS
JQuery
D3.js
GeoJSON/TopoJSON
TimeGlider

Add a label to the center of a polygon in kml

Can anyone tell me how I would add a label to the center of a polygon by way of kml like the ones in the link: http://maps.huge.info/zip.htm.. I don't want a marker and I don't need the info to pop up when its clicked, I need it to be there from load, it would just have the zip code for the particular polygon. I wont be drawing the entire US zip code, maybe just a few at a time. Oh, and I'm using mapquest API not google or anything else
Use the Leaflet.label plugin, that does exactly this.

Can I create a Calligraphy look with SVG?

is it possible to create a stroke with a dynamic width with SVG? I want to achieve a Calligraphy look like here, here or here.
Is this even possible? It seems customization of strokes in SVG is fairly limited. Even gradients in strokes seem to be non-trivial (see here).
There is a proposal to add into SVG standard a mechanism, that does exactly what you want:
http://www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG/WG/wiki/Proposals/Variable_width_stroke
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-svg/2013May/0041.html
There's even an example implementation available here:
https://rawgit.com/birtles/curvy/master/index.html
It is, however, by no means official and we cannot be even sure it'll ever be.
Until then you'll need to stick to Bezier curves and object filling:
You can also use calligraphic fonts, for example - Tangerine available on Google CDN:
This approach requires less work since you don't need to draw everything from scratch, but then again, using third party fonts leaves you with little control over the final result.
You can't dynamically adjust the stroke of a path element. However you could draw a path, use a fill color on it instead of stroke, then double back upon the letters at a slight distance away from the original line.
Also, if you are using the SVG on the web then you can use css fonts on text elements. There are some pretty good cursive fonts that you can use for free... just check google web fonts.

Stop dimming / color change of overlapping placemarks on Google Earth

I'm using Google Earth to display point data as placemarks. The data is on a color-coded scale, and so it's pretty important that they keep their colors (which are set via a series of differently colored icons)
However, Google Earth seems to have a 'feature' whereby it dims some placemarks if they overlap. I can find no reference to this feature, nor any way to avoid it, turn it off, using KML or otherwise.
The question was originally asked here:
https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/forum/#!topic/earth/DTl6yGLvPvw
Where there are also screenshots of the problem.
Thanks!

Are there other options of enabling an irregular shaped clickable area on a web page other than image maps?

(This is a post that I'm moving from ui stackexchange.)
We have some irregular shaped areas...imagine a map of the states of the US. Imagine also that inside each state there is a rectangular region that contains graphics and text. We want to make each of the states react to mouseover/mouseout/click.
If it is a straight up HTML/Javascript page (no Flash), are there other ways to implement this than image maps?
If this is not possible, I would also consider just having the rectangular region within each state react to mouse events.
Does "straight up HTML" mean you can use Javascript? If so, consider the Raphael javascript library, which wraps SVG. Check out their homepage for a great overview of what you can do, including this example of counties (?) of Australia: http://raphaeljs.com/australia.html
You could also consider processing.js, which is a similar visualisation library but wraps canvas as opposed to SVG.
how about coordinates? grab your map of the us, figure out the polygons that contain a state, and every time the user clicks somewhere, get the position of the click and figure out what polygon that position is in.
the only tricky part is doing the translation from logical to physical. i.e. when you get the location of a click it'll probably give you the location in global browser positioning, and you'll need to figure out where your image is using jquery's .position().

Resources