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Mapstraction is a Javascript library started by Tom Carden and Steve Coast with encouragement from Mikel Maron. It provides a single API to display maps in a web browser. As of October 2006 it supports switching between Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!s javascript mapping APIs. There are also plans to extend Mapstraction to support OpenStreetMap in the future.

As the name suggests, the code is designed to make it as easy as possible to abstract the Javascript code required to display a map. A developer can code their application once, then switch between online map providers by changing a single attribute in a single line of code. The rest of the application remains unchanged, but the underlying map calls are automatically changed by Mapstraction to match the new map API provider.

In June 2006 the British vertical real-estate search engine Nestoria announced they were sponsoring Mapstraction[1]. Steve Coast mentioned Mapstraction in his Where 2.0 presentation on OpenStreetMap[2].

[edit] External links

• Mapstraction
• Mapstraction tutorial
• Sites using Mapstraction
• OpenStreetMap