Figure 1. A map showing all gas and oil wells with core photographs for West Virginia available from the State Geological Survey.
Click on markers on the map or on API numbers in the table to obtain basic data about the wells and to link to photographs.
Photographs will open up in a new window or tab.
The map was generated using Google Maps API.
Code was adapted from that developed and provided by J. Detwiler (Detwiler 2009(a)).
Icon was obtained from CoolClips (CoolCLIPS 2009).
Icon shadow was generated at Google Map Custom Marker Maker (Powerhut 2009).
Data were obtained from the West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey (WVGES 2009).
Data were converted into an XML file using a tool developed and provided by J. Detwiler (Detwiler 2009(b)).
Overall Thoughts About the Lesson
As was advertised, Lesson 4 covered a lot of material and it took me quite a while to get through it all. I was, however, able to work through the lesson and the code without extreme difficulty. I spent "extra" time on the previous lesson (Lesson 3) really trying to understand JavaScript and, although I am not exactly a JavaScript genius, I think that my effort paid off. Even though I am getting better with JavaScript, I still spend a lot of time trying to keep my code formatted correctly--it is forever getting out of alignment (not that that is really a JavaScript-specific problem). I think that it might have to do with tabs versus spaces and, perhaps, what software is used to read and edit the file? And, I don't like to complain too much but I find the use of curly brackets in JavaScript somewhat maddening...why curly brackets why? In terms of some specifics related to the lesson this week, I did suffer greatly with the DOM-related quiz questions but finally got it (the W3 materials are pretty good but it seems to me that some of their examples should be a bit more complex than they are...they just kind of scratch the surface in my opinion). I really like the shapefile to XML tool that was provided--the tool will certainly come in handy if I end up generating a lot of XML files. Originally, I did try to include a field in the XML file that contained links to Web pages which caused a problem. I ended up modifying the field and my code to work around the issue. I don't think that I completely understand everything in the Ajax section (though Ajax sounds great)...but I guess we will be covering that topic further in the next lesson. And, I am looking forward to eventually experimenting with PHP (I think).
For my project this week, the data set that I selected is from my work--I work at the West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey in Morgantown. The data set contains data for 11 gas and oil wells that have core photographs. I selected a rather small data set to keep the data, map, and sidebar manageable. However, I am confident that I would be able to apply everything that I learned this week to handle a larger data set. With respect to layout, I had a bit of trouble initially with my text showing up behind the map and sidebar. I tried several techniques to remedy the situation and the "div" tag seemed to work best. I am not quite sure that what I have done is totally robust because although I have specified the absolute position for the map, sidebar, and text below the map and I know the size of the map and sidebar; I do not know the exact size of my header information (page title, student name, and date). Maybe I missed something somewhere? I really like the Google Map Custom Marker Maker which I used to make the icon shadow. I tried to create the shadow manually but I was less than thrilled with my results so, I'll just stick with the marker maker in the future. One question that I have as a result of the project is--is there a way to do scale-dependent rendering with Google Maps API?
References
CoolCLIPS. 2009. CoolClips > Main Subjects > Industry > Resources > Oil and Gas > Oil Wells. Online. Available from http://dir.coolclips.com/Industry/Resources/Oil_and_Gas/Oil_Wells/Vector/, accessed 18 May 2009.
Detwiler, Jim. 2009(a). GIS Mashups, Lesson 4: Reading Data from an XML File > Reading Points from an XML File and Adding a Sidebar. State College, PA: The Pennsylvania State University World Campus Certificate Program and Masters Degree in GIS. Online. Available from https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog863/l4_p4.html and https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog863/l4_p5.html, accessed 7 May 2009.
Detwiler, Jim. 2009(b). GIS Mashups, Lesson 4: Reading Data from an XML File > Converting a Shapefile to XML. State College, PA: The Pennsylvania State University World Campus Certificate Program and Masters Degree in GIS. Online. Available from https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog863/l4_p3.html, accessed 7 May 2009.
Powerhut. 2009. Google Map Custom Marker Maker. Online. Available from http://www.powerhut.co.uk/googlemaps/custom_markers.php, accessed 18 May 2009.
WVGES, West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey. 2009. Oil and Gas Database. Morgantown, West Virginia. Online (within WVGES network). Accessed 15 May 2009.
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