WeoGeo is continuously developing our scalable geo-content management technology.  One of the most “visible” recent changes is the switch from ka-Map to Openlayers for displaying our pre-cached image tiles for preview and customization.  The switch was driven by the need to enhance the performance and functionality of the site, as well as enhancing the ability of our developers to create a better product in the future.

Below are some of the benefits of our switch to Openlayers:

• No more IFRAMEs = faster site loading, fewer HTTP requests, less memory usage (1 browser process instead of 4)
• When zooming in and out, tiles from previous zoom-level are resized and will appear dithered, until new tiles load. This is an improvement over the old behavior, where zooming in would result in a blank canvas temporarily while the new zoom-level tiles loaded.
• Rubber-band zoom – hold-down shift and draw a box around area of interest
• Dataset selection is retained in the navigation maps grid when zooming in and out, as long as the selected dataset continues to appear in the result list.
• Zooming in with the mouse wheel will keep the area under the mouse cursor at the same position, rather than zooming straight into the center.
• The dataset map extents are limited to the bounds of the dataset.

We continue to focus on developing the best content library, hosting, and market place service for the mapping industry.  Stay tuned for more exciting things to come.