Mapping Changes
As these walking tours have developed I’ve tried several different mapping solutions with mixed success. The latest was to add embedded Google maps at the end of each post. These are convenient, but greatly slow down the loading of pages. So now I’m trying something new with Google maps. Using the recently added “My Maps” tool, I’ve created external maps for each of our walking tours on the Google Maps site. These are the links to the individual tour maps:
I’ll be updating my older posts in the coming days with these new links. The maps currently available under the “Walks & Maps” menu in the navigation bar will remain and I will continue to add to them.
One of the advantages with this new external solution is that folks who have a Google account (users of Gmail or Blogger, etc. already have one), can click the “Save to My Maps” link to preserve a personal copy of the map which can then be added to—great for those planning a trip to Paris.
Save each of the maps and you can zoom out to see all of the walks at the same time. I don’t know if this is actually useful to anyone, but I find it pretty cool :-)
When you click a point on the map a balloon will pop-up that contains a “Read the article” link that will return you to the relevant post on this site.
Also, fans of Google Earth can select the “View in Google Earth” link. This will download a .KML file which you can launch to zoom around the Paris sights in Google Earth.