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Home - General / All posts - New video: First Look - Serve Maps to the Web in 3 Minutes
Dimitri


7,233 post(s)
#19-May-23 14:35

A new video has been published to the Manifold videos page: First Look - Serve Maps to the Web in 3 Minutes.

Description:

New! Serve maps to the web in less than 3 minutes with no Internet server or map server required, and no programming. Manifold Universal and Manifold Server licenses now include full map serving built in with no other programs required. Everything is built into Manifold. Create the map display you want in your Manifold desktop like usual, save it, and then in less than one minute publish it to the web. This video shows how.

The video first shows how to publish a map to the web with a few clicks, browses it in a Bing browser, and then shows how easy it is to change the map being served: simply edit the map in Manifold as you like, save the map project and then with a click launch the web service again and the web page is updated. The video also shows how easy it is to add layers from other sources like other web sources or databases.

The video also shows how to serve maps from the inexpensive Universal license, from a command line. A $195 package is used to serve over 85 GB of map data in a really fast and responsive web page, with no programming, no need to learn how to install, administer, and maintain IIS or Apache, no need for third party map serving applications or technologies like MapServer or Leaflet, no need to learn web development, and no need to rebuild tile sets or go through other hassles when changing the maps being served. Super!

danb

2,008 post(s)
#19-May-23 20:03

Great overview. Thanks Dimitri. I love the way Manifold have done this because presumably (though likely a massive oversimplification on my part), you can in the future turn on other bits of the UI and they will become enabled in the web?

So quick and easy too. Even via the command line route!


Landsystems Ltd ... Know your land | www.landsystems.co.nz

Dimitri


7,233 post(s)
#20-May-23 06:34

you can in the future turn on other bits of the UI and they will become enabled in the web?

Yep.

Because it's Manifold itself that is powering Server (same internal DBMS, same analytic engine, etc) all those innards are available for Server to use. There are often a few small details in how the web UI gets hooked up compared to a desktop UI, but that's relatively easy.

As adamw has mentioned, there are many UI additions planned, and refinements will be added to those UI bits already in place. For example, a mouse wheel scroll should scroll on the center of the mouse cursor the way it works in the desktop, not in the center of the display as it works in the web UI. That's a small adjustment that will get done. Zoom box also will get done.

It's actually quite amazing how well the idea of using basic Manifold infrastructure to power Server works out, in terms of performance and such. For example, the "base map" example shown towards the end of the video is a really complicated map in terms of all the various Manifold facilities used, but it still renders fast, even despite the very large size.

For example, most of the layers (all of the label and vector layers) use varying degrees of transparency, the point symbols use shadow and halo effects, as do the labels, there are three really huge images created from the same table that each use slightly different style for palettes and hill shading options, individual points and labels are being turned on/off depending on their population fields and the zoom setting for that layer, the roads layer has symbology that mixes left and right borders with a main style, plus halo and shadow, etc. The layers all have overlap settings, min/max range settings, legend settings, and so on.

All that WYSIWYG stuff you'd do with style and Layers and such to get exactly the look you want and how it operates when you zoom in and out for desktop use (or for display in a layout), well, it all works exactly the same in the map when it's served to the web, and it works fast enough to power very many people browsing the page.

So however you want to rig up that map, like including layers you create on the fly from some query or from some data source, that's all OK and available for you to use. Just create the map the way you normally would on the desktop, no matter how complicated, and it will work on the web.

dchall8
980 post(s)
#19-May-23 20:51

Just that easy!

A couple of us tried to get Manifold 8 on a server for our business back in 2008. After several near successes, we had to give up and get back to our normal jobs. We were hoping to do our work in the Texas Panhandle and make the maps available to the clients in Houston. Couldn't get it to work longer than a few minutes from one side of our hotel to the other. This is excellent!

One little nit about the video. Provences of Mexico sounds as awkward as states of France.

artlembo


3,329 post(s)
#19-May-23 20:52

Dave,

I neglected to share this video earlier. It shows how I stood things up on a very under spec’ed laptop from home using my cable modem port forwarding. Very easy to get into the game.

This is much easier than 8, and hopefully shows how you can do it without a server - just a home cable modem.

danb

2,008 post(s)
#19-May-23 21:26

Another great video. Thanks Art and thanks for deciding to share this


Landsystems Ltd ... Know your land | www.landsystems.co.nz

dale

614 post(s)
#20-May-23 02:33

Thanks Art, and the ever dulcet voicedManifold channel.

Cost, and ease of deployment is just awesome.

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