Hi,
Some time ago, when dial-up modem use was the latest and greatest. There was a feature in most browsers to save the web page as an offline web-page (a feature that still exists). I know such a thing can be done for something like a an entire web-site. Only what I’m trying to do is save the address maps I search for using something like Google maps. Can anyone tell me if this is possible?
So that rather than printing-out various zoom-ins of different portions of a trip I could just save all the information relevant to getting from “Point A” to “Point B” as offline web-page information? Thanks in advance.
Do you mean, for example, the driving directions that appear on the left-hand side of a Google Maps page showing you driving directions, along with the map currently showing on that page? I would use the web browser’s print function and print the file to a .PDF (a functionality built into the OS for some desktop OSes, available as a free download for other OSes.)
It’s still not clear to me. When you say “the map itself”, do you mean a screenshot of the map as it currently appears on the page, or do you mean you want to have the map with working controls also, so you can zoom in, zoom out, move the map around in the viewing window, etc?
Thanks Rumor_watkins, no, not biased to any one mapping utility, just like the ability have all the landmarks and streets at my disposal.
Arnold Winkelried I really don’t understand how my question is so confusing, if you think about it, how would having a screenshot of a map be of any more advantage than sending this same map to the printer? -which is what I said I was trying to avoid.
If you’ve ever noticed with mapping sites like Google maps, certain information isn’t indicated on the map until you have zoomed-in or out from a certain scale. To really get the most use out of the map, you must look at it from different levels of zooming and sometimes switch to aerial photos as well, to match buildings in urban areas.
Well, you wouldn’t need a printer if you saved a screenshot. I guess the question isn’t that confusing, but it seems obvious to me (I could be 100% wrong of course) that, to do what you want, you would need to download all the data used for Google maps down to your local machine - meaning all the geographical data, all the satellite images, etc. Since you can drag your cursor and move to a position off the map you are currently seeing, and/or you can zoom out until you see the whole US at once, move to another state, and zoom in again, you would need this information for the whole country. And I don’t think that the mapping site would want you or allow you to download all that data.
I think that Arnold is confused by your question, because, if you do not want a screenshot, but rather a full zoomable, scrollable map, then by implication, you’re asking for a map of the whole world, only offline. That’s how these systems work, by not paging through a traditional 2d streetmap, but using an iterative many-layered approach. To save more than one layer would imply either saving the entire dataset, or for the mapping tool itself to allow some kind of localized save.
Maybe Rumor_Watkins’ link to Openstreetmaps offers that ability - but there seems to be some degree of technical savvy required. Plus, the fact that www.openstreetmap.org is currently offline does not bode well.
ETA: Posted before I saw Arnold Winkelried’s reply.
No, he’s specifically told you that’s not what he wants. He wants all the data, but only for the relevant map portions of a calculated point-to-point route. It’s not that onerous a data-fetching task as y’all make it out to seem.
Except he also wants to be able to zoom in and out. How is Google Maps supposed to know how far he is going to zoom in and out? How much of a radius around the planned route does he want to look at? Is he going to want to see all the satellite photos, and be able to zoom in and out for those also? Is he going to want to switch to street mode view and rotate to see both sides of the street?
You’re not going to need a zoom-out of the entire planet, or your entire state, if you’re going across town to a new record shop.
For example, when you print out Google Maps directions, you can include a large map of your entire route, and small turn by turn pictures - it’s not that hard to tell the Gmaps servers to download a reasonable amount of surrounding data. His question wasn’t that hard to comprehend :rolleyes:
The website isn’t offline, just the backend database, which is down for planned maintenance (it was announced about a week ago). I’ve used OSM for a few years, and it’s been up pretty reliably - not as reliably as Google Maps, of course, but pretty well for a community-supported project.
Define “reasonable amount of surrounding data”. Does it include street views and satellite views? How far “up” can you zoom out? How far “in” can you zoom out?
Here is a sample set of driving directions (maps.google.com: from Universal Studios to a hotel in Santa Monica, CA: half-hour drive), that I gave to a friend just recently. What is the “reasonable amount of surrounding data” for this route? Would it include everything I see in the smallest map view that includes both the starting point and the end point?
Rumor_Watkins, I comprehended the question just fine (and, not to speak for him, but I think Arnold Winkelried understood it fine as well). My point is that while mapping services like Gmaps will let you download flat turn-by-turn directions, if you want a fully zoomable map including the layer data at all levels, this is a much different proposition. However localized the area of interest may be, based on the architecture of most services, asking for a little patch of every layer is functionally equivalent to asking for a all (or at least a big-ass chunk) of every layer.
And looking at Openstreetmaps, it does seem that it’s more of a technically demanding tool, rather than “right-click, select Save for Offline Use” simple, which seems to be what Thinktank is looking for.
Every time you zoom in or out, or move tour central point, on Google Maps, it is pulling new information off Google’s server. You can’t do that when you are offline. What the OP wants cannot be done with Google.
I have seen OpenStreetMap. It does much the same as the street map function of Google Maps, and it appears to work in a very similar way. Any map site with that sort of functionality is pretty much bound to work that way.
