Leaflet VS OpenLayers3

9. Leaflet

Leaflet is the most famous open-source map library, with lots of plugins. 2 of them are used to animate a marker on the map:

Leaflet seamlessly integrates into web applications either directly from npm or through a CDN.

Leaflet stands out as one of the top open source JavaScript libraries for crafting interactive maps. Optimized for both mobile and web devices, it is relatively small (around 42KB) and offers a ton of features, plugins, and a straightforward API. It works across all browsers and platforms.

Finding maplibre 'better' was more valid at the time than today, and is also subjective. The creators and maintainers of both libraries have done some great work (and are still doing so).

Back in January 2022, the stable version of leaflet, v1.7.1, was from September 2020, and was affected by some small bugs degrading the user experience. Although the release of following version seemed close, there was no clear schedule for it, and I had concerns about how maintained the library would remain.

As of today, the bug from 2015 where there is some white space between map tiles on fractional zoom levels [0] is still open.

Also, leaflet was a pain to integrate in Svelte Kit framework, because it depended on `window` and-or `document`, not available at server side.

Maplibre, on the other hands, with a feature set roughly equivalent to Leaflet, benefited from much more frequent releases, and seemed more stable across browsers and devices. It was also easier to make it work in Svelte kit.

[0]: https://github.com/Leaflet/Leaflet/issues/3575

For a personal project, I had to use Leaflet with Svelte, and I faced some problems during development.

Official Website: https://leafletjs.com/

You might wanna check out Leaflet (https://leafletjs.com/) which is a free, open-source library for interactive maps. Combine that with React-Leaflet (https://react-leaflet.js.org/) for seamless React integration. You can find Pond/Lake GeoJSON data at https://gis.mass.gov/ and load it into your map to make it interactive. Good luck!

leaflet was pretty sweet to work with. I'll also recommend if you end up adding JS maps to any live pages.

You probably know this, but in Google Maps at least, you can use browser zoom (ctrl/cmd +/-) to change the size of labels without zooming into the actual map.

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Speaking of maps, I got to work a fun zoom project a few years ago: https://map.fieldmuseum.org/

We used https://openlayers.org/ and thought long and hard about how to best handle zooming and variable levels of information density & visual hierarchy. If you zoom all the way out, we just highlight where the building is relative to the surroundings. As you start to zoom in, we start to highlight major exhibitions and entrances. Then as you zoom in more, we start showing recommended paths, smaller exhibitions, etc. The label sizes try to scale up and down at each level, smoothly, in order to balance readability and density.

Eventually you can reach the max zoom level and the labels will just grow bigger and bigger, but the SVGs dynamically shrink so they remain pictograms and not just contextless-lines.

Then if you keep going, you eventually find microscopic easter eggs :)

The code is pretty jank (and abandoned), but it's FOSS vanilla JS/HTML/CSS, and the only dependency is on OpenLayers: https://github.com/arcataroger/openlayers_indoor_map

In order to display the GeoJSON features on a map, we will use OpenLayers, which is a very powerful open-source mapping library that is also very simple to use.

OpenLayers is a modular, high-performance library designed for displaying and interacting with maps and geospatial data. It is a free, open-source JS library released under the 2-Clause BSD License, facilitating the creation of interactive and feature-rich web maps.

OpenLayers is available via the ol npm package, offering developers a powerful toolkit for creating sophisticated maps. Here is a JavaScript implementation that utilizes OpenLayers to showcase a map:

Official Website: https://openlayers.org/

For web maps I'd strongly recommend using OpenLayers. While it's less convenient to get started with compared to the alternatives it's also much more feature-complete and you'll likely hit a ceiling in terms of functionality much later than you would with the others.

Sticking with the roofing theme, you could make an application that shows shingle delivery truck drivers their stops on a map. It would be cool if the user could click on the stop and move it through varying statuses such as pending, en-route, completed or canceled, view the items in the order, and have it send your user a message when the statuses change. It might also be kinda cool if you could allow the delivery driver to start their shift, break for lunch, and end their day. You could have manager users that could log into your site too and export the timesheets for all or a subset of the drivers. You could even use something like d3.js or chart.js to give the managers insights into driver productivity. Some of the data may have to be mocked but it could be a fun project. After a brief search I found this https://openlayers.org open source js map library that could be cool to work with. In the past I have worked with the google maps api which wasn’t terrible. Make sure to set up some testing and a CI/CD pipeline. While not strictly required I think it would go along way to demonstrate that you are well rounded and will prepare you for working with them in the industry.

I will build a location-based application using and comparing three open-source map libraries: MapLibre GL JS, OpenLayers, and Leaflet.

Seems like MapTiler is maintaining an open source full stack vector alternative, and OpenLayers[0] looks good as well, so maybe it's time for legacy libraries to add vector support, or for users to switch libraries? There's even bindings from Maplibre GL to Leaflet [1].

I at least would find it interesting to see the two compared by someone other than me ;).

[0] https://openlayers.org/

[1] https://github.com/maplibre/maplibre-gl-leaflet