Maps Nigeria Initiative: Creating and publishing simple web maps using Microsoft Bing maps

Saturday, 20 June 2015

Creating and publishing simple web maps using Microsoft Bing maps

Things to note
- To have access to Microsoft Bing maps, user should have a Microsoft user account or Hotmail account.
- Bing maps is the Microsoft equivalent of Google maps engine.
- To practice along, create a Microsoft or Hotmail account if you did not have one previously.

Task
To create and publish to the web a simple map from dataset captured by the User.

Procedure
Sign into Bing maps with Microsoft or Hotmail account username and password. Click My places (red boxed) and a My places editor window will pop up (green box).

Select a file to import by clicking on browse. A list is similar to a working folder. Similar layers can be imported into the same List.

For the demo, the polygon layer called BufferDam2 is imported in. This message appears when the import is successful.

The imported file is seen as a blue polygon (red boxed) and is named Placemark1 by default.

To change the base map to an imagery, Click on dropdown button beside Bird’s eye (red boxed)

Viola! The base map is now an imagery and the imported layer can be seen clearly now.

Click on the feature and an Info-window will pop up. Click on Edit in the Info-window.

Edit pushpin properties box opens. Here changes can be made and even images added.

For the demo, see the result of the editing done on the pop-up window.

Other Options are to click on Actions > Export > Select KML, GPX or even GeoRSS.

To Publish the map online, Click on Share (red boxed).

The Share this map window, user has options –LINK and EMBED IN A WEBPAGE. For the demo, we select the EMBED IN A WEBPAGE. Select Customize and preview to work on the map.

Here MAP SIZE, MAP OPTIONS, MAP STYLES and MAP LINKS can be customized to suit the webpage. For the demo, Large size is selected and Draggable map is selected.