Advancement of web standards and techniques for developing hypermedia maps on the internet

Abstract

In the past two decades, there has been a rapid growth of the use of multimedia in computer-assisted mapping systems to develop interactive, multimedia maps called hypermedia maps. The development of hypermedia maps foruse on the Internet relies upon the advancement of web standards (i.e., markup languages). This chapter first briefly describes the advancement of web standards, including Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), Extensible Markup Language (XML), and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). The chapter then describes the techniques for developing hypermedia maps on the Internet, including scripting in HTML, using Web development tools, scripting in SVG, using custom development software, and scripting in Virtual Reality Macro Language (VRML). Finally, the author describes two examples of hypermedia maps developed using the current web standards. One is a hypermedia animated map in the SVG format developed for the visualization of spatial health statistics; the other is a virtual reality movie for the visualization of 3D terrain landscapes and 3D artificial features (e.g., trees, buildings, light poles, text, and so on).