Description
ZapMap is an applet with a canvas and a control panel. Lines on the canvas represent streets; just the major thoroughfares, and any minor roads needed by the places. Spots on the canvas are places with a website. Clicking on a spot opens that place's website. Clicking on a line displays the street name.
This online version of ZapMap has several limited databases of streets and places in Silicon Valley, California, and the San Francisco Bay Area.
To move around within the map, hold the SHIFT-KEY (or use the right mouse button) and click in the direction you want to travel. Or, zoom out enough for your destination to become visible, pick the center, then zoom in.
Below the canvas is a control panel with five buttons and two pop-up lists:
- ZAP
- In
- Out
- Center/UnCent (toggle)
- Streets/Places (toggle)
- All Categories (pop-up list)
- All Places (pop-up list)
Clicking the ZAP button scales the screen just enough so that all places in the selected category are visible and centered within the canvas. Use the ZAP button to make sure all the places in the category you've selected are displayed.
Clicking the In or Out buttons will zoom in or out, changing the scale of the map by a factor or 1.7 or 0.6 respectively.
Clicking the Center button activates the cursor so that clicking the mouse button anywhere on the canvas makes that position the new center. UnCent will undo that choice. Note: Centering can also be accomplished by holding the SHIFT-KEY while clicking, or using the right mouse button.
Clicking the Places button displays text (the place name) near each spot. Street names can be displayed concurrently by clicking selected lines.
Clicking the Streets button displays text (the street name) in the center of certain lines, determined by the current scale of the map. Zooming in or out will change which street names become visible unless the street name was explicitly requested by clicking on the line. (Place name labels can be displayed concurrently by clicking the selected spot. This also makes the spot "hot".)
Choose from the All Category pop-up list to display selected catagories of places. Use the ZAP button to make all of the places in the selected category visible and centered within the canvas.
Choose from the All Places pop-up list to display any one place. (It lists only places within the selected category.) ZAP is called automatically when the selected place would be located outside the visible area.
Hint: You'll notice when returning to the map after visiting a website that the selected hot spot has cooled off. To reactivate the spot, click the Street/Place Names button.
Note: Shift-key, Command-key, Option-key, Control-key, Meta-key, and right mouse button all modify the mouse click in the same way. A modified click within the canvas picks a new center.
Secret: Click on the control panel outside of the buttons to open (and close) another panel for conveniently changing databases.
Sorry. Java (version 1.02) hasn't the capability yet of streaming to your printer via the Print command in your browsers menu. Best you can do for now is capture the screen display with a utility and print that image. (On the Mac, option-command-3 creates a PICT file on the desktop. What's the equivalent on a Windows machine?)
ZapMap was created with Sun Microsystem's JDK 1.02. It is comprised of more than twelve classes totalling around 60k. The commercial version has a larger database of streets and places, plus additional features, and is available as a standalone application.