Tutorial : Thematic mapping with the Google Maps Flash API

Google has recently released a Flash version of the Google Maps API. The goal is to give developers and designers more freedom in the presentation and graphical effects of their maps. Google is certainly not the first provider of a Flash mapping API (see the Yahoo! Maps AS3 API for example) but as one of the original proponents of Ajax web mapping tools, it marks an interesting change of direction (although the original Google Maps API is probably not going away anytime soon). One interesting aspect of using Flash is also a boost in vector graphics rendering speed, which I am going to demonstrate here, with a tutorial showing how to display a chloropleth map with this new API. Here is a link to the final application. It has to be noted that I am definitely not a Flex/ActionScript guru (just a few evenings of experience) so there are probably better ways of doing things than what I am showing here.



