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Comment by 7952 | Hacker News Reader

I find that if you need more complex mapping features then OpenLayers is really good. It can do an amazing amount straight out of the box, but it does take time to get used to the API. It is more like an actual mapping or GIS program.

But for building functionality outside of the map I tend to use Leaflet instead due to the ease of use. You can treat the map more like a black box and the API is easier to use.

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Surprised that no one is talking about ways to leverage the server so you’re not doing all the work on the client. You can shift layers by precomputing either raster or vector so you don’t push your poor, maybe mobile client to the max.

Classically you would do this with Tilemill for rasters which was amazing software, if crashy. And since we’re on a mapbox thread what I think put them on the map. I wish it was still actively developed and adapted for vectors.

Precomputing raster tiles became painful once screen densities started to demand @2x and even @3x resolution images.

https://github.com/go-spatial/fresco and https://github.com/maputnik/editor are TileMill-like editing programs, though specific to one tile format and renderer (MapboxGL)

tippecanoe (also from mapbox) is fantastic software for vector tile generation. https://github.com/mapbox/tippecanoe

OpenLayers supports rotation, Leaflet does not -- a considerable difference in implementation burden.

https://github.com/Leaflet/Leaflet/issues/268

https://openlayers.org/en/latest/examples/rotation.html

This is a critical point for anyone selecting an API to build on top of with their own ambitious new web app idea.

Absolutely. If you want something that's no hassles there's a lot of great options.

Heck I'll just do the straight Google maps api often, it's really easy.

OpenLayer is like vim/emacs, some people think the hassle is worth it.

The viability of using Google maps really comes down to the application. An application with a lot of users that rely on the usage of street view can become very expensive.

Nice quote: “Don't lose out on the potential of tomorrow by thinking too big today.”

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