Hillsborough County Historic Maps

Matthew King

Hillsborough County Historic Maps

• About the project

– Create historical interactive Google® maps of Hillsborough County

– Provide overlays for year 1852

• Currently only section 29, range 19, maps 1-33

– Place various historical objects on Google® maps

• Field Notes

• Points of Interest

• Images/Photos

About Hillsborough County Historical Maps

“The Fort King Road Then and Now”

Jeff Hough

“A mile-by-mile survey of the original military trail that extended from Fort Brooke at Tampa Bay to Fort King in what is now Ocala. The authors have used original surveys from the 1840s opposite aerial photographs from the 1940s, showing the original Fort King Road and overlaid with modern roads.” – Seminole Wars Foundation

Web 2.0 Technology Options

• AJAX – Asynchronous Java Script and XML – HTML/XHTML/CSS – XML/XSLT – JavaScript

• Silverlight – HTML/XHTML/CSS – XML – ASP/.NET

• Flex – HTML/CSS – XML/MXML – Action Script

Other Technologies

• MySQL™ database (http://mysql.com/)

• Google® Maps API (http://code.google.com/apis/maps/index.html)

• WordPress® Web Log (http://wordpress.org/)

• Apache Web Server (http://httpd.apache.org/)

Tools

• Ajax – Eclipse

(http://www.eclipse.org/)

– Aptana (http://aptana.com/)

– Net Beans (http://netbeans.org/)

• Flex – Adobe® Flex/Flash Builder (http://www.adobe.com)

• Silverlight – Microsoft ® Expression Web

– Visual Studio® 2008/2010

Adobe® Web Premium

• Adobe® Flash Professional

• Adobe® Flash Catalyst

• Adobe® Illustrator

• Adobe® Photoshop

• Adobe® Flash Builder

Why Adobe Web Premium?

• Multi-Browser compatible with Flash plug-in

• Learn newer technology/multi-platform

• Google® API compatible with Flash

Alternatives

• Adobe® Flex plug-in for Eclipse (http://adobe.com)

• InkScape vs. Adobe® Illustrator (http://inkscape.org/)

• GIMP vs. Adobe® Photoshop (http://www.gimp.org/)

My Responsibilities

• Research Requirements

– Design requirements

– Database requirements

• Design

– Designed website using Adobe ® Flash Catalyst, Illustrator and Photoshop

– Create database and tables using MySQL

• Import data into MySQL databases

My Responsibilities (cont.…)

• Development – Code MXML/Action Script for user interface – Code client side Action Script to interact with user – Code Google Maps (KML) to interact with user – Create server side PHP scripts to interact with user

and MySQL database – Create server side PHP scripts to interact with Google

Maps API and MySQL database – Create PHP scripts to pull data from MySQL database

and convert to XML for XMLHttpRequest for WordPress® Blog

Home Page

Maps Page

Maps Database

• MySQL

– Maps Database

Maps Page Maps

Apache

MySql

PHP

PHP

Google

Maps API

User Selects Year

Req

ues

ts

Fro

m

Places o

n

Blog Page

Blog (WordPress) Database

• MySQL

– Blog Database

wp_posts

PK post_author

post_date

post_date_gmt

post_content

post_title

post_excerpt

post_status

comment_status

ping_status

post_password

post_name

to_ping

pinged

post_modified

post_modified_gmt

post_content_filtered

post_parent

guid

menu_order

post_type

post_mime_type

comment_count

ID

wp_users

PK,FK1 ID

PK user_login

user_pass

user_nicename

user_email

user_url

user_registered

user_activation_key

user_status

display_name

post_author

Maps Page User Selects B

log

Req

ues

ts

Fro

m

Places o

n

External WordPress® Page

Book Page

Purchase Book

• “The Fort King Road Then and Now”

• Jeffrey A. Hough • Jerry C. Morris

About Us

• Developer

– Matthew King

• GIS Analyst/Author

– Jeff Hough

Most Challenging Aspects

• Design – My most challenging aspect was design

• I am not a web designer

• Not familiar with photo programs

• Difficult time deciding on a design and sticking to it

• Waste too much time on design

– I addressed these issues by • Use online tutorials

• Code and worry about design later

• Hire a designer – in the real world

Other challenges

• Learning new technologies

– Action Script

– Adobe Flex/Flash Builder

– Google Maps/KML/GIS

Flex Positives/Negatives

• Positives

– Platform/Browser independent

– Development/Design easier than AJAX

• Negatives

– Some mobile devices do not support Adobe Flash®

Results

• What did I learn? – Flex Technologies

• Action Script • MXML

– Adobe tools • Flash Catalyst • Illustrator • Photoshop • Flash Builder

– XHTML/HTML 5.0 – CSS – Google Maps API/KML – Server Side Scripting

• PHP

– Requirements gathering is most important

Changes

• What would I do different?

– Less time on design, more time on coding

– Separate MXML from Action Code

– Label names of components

Advise

• Choose your project carefully

– Don’t get in over your head

• Research requirements extensively

– Helps organize your project plan

– Minimize surprises

• Do documentation first

– Helps keep you on track

– Can always update later