mourner

Yeah, sorry for that — now that we're using a much better docs system, and will archive docs for older versions.

Leaflet focuses on being lightweight, fast, easy to use and suitable for most mapping apps, while OpenLayers is more geared towards GIS/academics with its vast built-in support for different formats and standards.

Fantastic explanation, thank you!

It's already possible, we just need to put out an example of how to do it. :)

It's currently a bit hacky but works — I think I'll put out a basic demo in a few days and then build from there.

The whole backend stack is open source — check out https://github.com/mapbox/?query=vector (all things vector data) and https://github.com/mapbox/?query=fontnik (powers font processing for GL)

Yes, upcoming Mapbox Studio release will allow you to author vector tiles for GL (with custom data), which you can fully style on the client in turn.

Note that Mapbox GL is a collaborative effort of a big talented team — a lot of people worked on this, I'm only a minor part.

Sorry, we focused so much on the underlying tech challenges and getting this out in the open as fast as possible that we slipped some presentation details. Fixing today.

The whole Mapbox GL stack is open source and can be used locally as well. It is complicated, but possible nevertheless.

Also, it's very different — with OL3, you just have GL rendering usual server-rendered image tiles with some simple vector data overlays, while Mapbox GL JS renders OSM vector data on the client.

Valid point, will add an attribution control shortly.

The data is loaded from server as 512x512 protobuf tiles (an efficient binary format) in a Web Worker and parsed/processed there.

Leaflet creator here, worked on both libraries.

It makes a lot of sense because this library is vastly different from usual slippy maps — fluid continuous zoom & rotation, extremely powerful visualization and interactivity potential, no DOM constraints — fitting it into the Leaflet API which was designed for simple image tile-based maps would be very limiting.

On the other hand, Mapbox GL JS is a very complicated technology under the hood, it is much heavier, with more code, lots of algorithms, serious backend technology to support it etc. So there's a place for both libraries — Leaflet remaining the go-to super-simple, friendly and lightweight library for most maps, while GL JS being an experimental ground for maps of the future with unlimited potential.

Also, Mapbox GL JS + Leaflet integration plugin is coming soon. Stay tuned :)

Sure. Oh but wait, there is an actual map there!

It's more about startups wanting to rely on open data and open source vs proprietary.

That's going to seriously shake the mapping space. MapBox is quite an unstoppable force now.

Could you give more details on this problem? Do you mean that map moves more slowly than the cursor? In what browser/system does it happen?

Weird, didn't happen before. If you report the problem to https://github.com/CloudMade/Leaflet/issues I'm sure it'll be fixed soon.

It is also seriously targeted at mobile devices like iPhone and Android. It also has quite different approaches to API and source code architecture (with Leaflet leaning towards OOP and Polymaps towards functional approach).

Well, it's in early stages of development, I'm sure it'll become quite stable in future - just give it some time.

One huge advantage is that unlike Google Maps it is Open Source.