Awesome Table: A new Google Maps view

Post date: Feb 14, 2015 12:57:58 AM

Google Maps turned 10 this week and the best way to celebrate is to bring you a new, improved Maps view in Awesome Table!

A new Google Maps view

Until now, the Maps view was delivered through the Google visualization API, and not the Google Maps API itself. Google Viz team made a good job in providing a simple way to display simple maps. But we soon realized that to harness the true power of Google Maps, we needed more than that.

The old Maps view

The new Maps view

So we played with the Maps API, added a bit of live geocoding, even use extra libraries to do some clustering, mixing everything with the powerful filters available in Awesome Table and you can now enjoy a new, prettier and more powerful Maps view:

Highlighted features

    • no marker number limit (previously you weren't able to display more than 400 markers)

    • marker clustering

    • management of markers on the exact same spot

    • zoom with mouse wheel

Settings

As before, data values can be coordinates (lat-long pairs) or addresses:

  • Latitude / longitude coordinates

  • The two columns are designated by the labels : MapsLat, MapsLong

  • Quick and safe, you should prefer this configuration.

  • Postal addresses

  • The column containing the addresses must be labeled : MapsAddress

  • This setting imply the live geo-coding of all addresses fed to Awesome Table. It is much slower than using lat/long pair, and the addresses will not always give a match and will not be displayed on the map.

To add a tool-tip displaying useful informations above the markers, use the label : MapsTooltip on the right column.

Below you can see the header of a spreadsheet using Lat/long coordinates (columns H and I) and a tool-tip (column K) with a template. The keyword Hidden is added on each of these column because this spreadsheet is the source for the below demonstration of the dual table/map view and we don't want to display the coordinates in the table !

Dual view : Table + Maps

This new map view comes with the possibility to display both a table view and a map view, linked to the same filters. Very useful if you have a lot of info to display!

And a few more updates...

You may have noticed, the configuration view underwent some changes.

    • A new Open the Spreadsheet button in the Sheet tab was added.

  • There is now a third column in the View tab, to reorder the elements displayed (filters, chart,...).

  • When you choose to display both a map and a table, you can also reorder the two of them and the filters like you want.

  • The Region setting, used for the Geochart Maps view has a drop-down helper to select the region displayed.