I have been testing -- trying to find a way to put Google maps on my RU weblog. This seems a problem for all weblog type websites (in fact any content management system based websites) though not just RU.
Having one map per page like here is possible in a contrived sort of way but I would like to have a mechanism to add a map where the map is totally described and created within the blog entry.
The way maps are currently created they require generation within the head portion of the page (requiring foreknowledge of the parameters and names of maps on the page). That doesn't seem to fit with the weblog model which presumably should allow for multiple maps within a weblog entry and 0 or more weblog entries containing maps on a page. Furthermore the numbers of maps is dynamic and variable.
Queries in the Google Maps support forum have yielded no results. In fact there is no indication even that the problem is understood.
The only potential solution I can think of is to force the tags describing the map locations to contain a common class and some description of the setup parameters required for the map, and then search for all class members in the head Javascript, creating the appropriate maps. I haven't tried that yet and I am not sure my Javascripting skills are up to it.
Surely someone out there has run into this problem before and either determined a solution or decided that there is no sensible solution?
Update: I am investigating two possible avenues -- one is to use the "Static Map API" which gets you a Google map jpg, gif or png -- maybe I could hyperlink that to the equivalent interactive mape?
Another is to put the map on a separate html page as it seems to want and use in Iframe tag in the weblog entry.
