Group 3 - Customizing Your Map

Colby Fayock: [0:00] Hey, mappers. Welcome to Lesson Group Three. In our first two groups of lessons, we learned the basics of maps and how we can programmatically add data to it. This third lesson group is going to be all about crafting the experience around the map.

[0:11] How can we help make the map easier for people to use? What can we do to help provide a better user experience?

[0:16] Our first lesson will be about adding restaurant delivery zones to our map. We'll use custom shapes, particularly circles. This will provide a lightly shaded region around our locations. This will help people immediately see if their location is within the delivery zone.

[0:29] Our second lesson will be about customizing the images that are used for the markers on the map. A little bit of this is just to make it fun and add a little bit of customization to the map. This is also a powerful mechanism to provide context clues for figuring out what locations mean.

[0:42] For our last lesson, we'll learn how we can take advantage of Leaflet's Geolocation API to find the browser's current location. Leaflet makes use of the browser's location features. Really, it's just an easier way to take advantage of the features that are already there.

[0:55] This can be powerful when coupled with features like a delivery zone. This will be helpful, so people can see at a glance where they are in the map. They'll be able to find out if they're close to the location or just in the delivery zone.

[1:04] This lesson group is all about adding features that will make our mapping app easier to use. User experience is an important factor in any app. Data-heavy applications like maps can easily become super complex.

[1:15] Ready to get started helping out the people using our app? Let's dive in.