[mapbuilder-announce] Community Mapbuilder Release 1.5 - alpha1

[Diez, M. <Mat...@ie...>]

December 21, 2006 - The Community Mapbuilder Team are proud to announce =
the first release in our 1.5 series.

The 1.5-alpha1 release is packed full of new features, including Faster =
downloading, Vector Rendering, Integration with OpenLayers, SLD Editing, =
support for OWS Context, GeoRSS, GML, WFS layers.

While core functionality remains stable, based on three years of =
development and testing, new features still have some major bugs and =
should be used for testing but should not be deployed yet. We plan to =
stablize the 1.5 branch early in 2007.

Our Mapbuilder development team continues to grow, we recently welcomed =
Sefano Menegon, Dirk van den Elzen, John Pulles, Vincent Schut, Saul =
Farber, and Gertjan van Oosten.

NEW FEATURES:

Vector rendering using SVG/VML:
SVG and VML rendering is available for recent browsers using MapPane2 =
and MapPaneOL. This rendering is much faster than the previous =
WZGraphics library.

Integration with OpenLayers:
The MapPaneOL widget now uses OpenLayers for rendering. This means we =
can easilly tap into OpenLayer's support for numerous map providers.
Eg: Tiled WMS, Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, MSN Maps, WFS, GML, etc.
We still haven't integrated the Mapbuilder tools with OpenLayer tools =
yet, but that is expected to be completed for the next release.

Faster startup:
Mapbuilder is now bundled up into one file and compressed into a half =
its original size.

OWS Context:
Mapbuilder previously stored its LayerList in a Web Map Context (WMC) =
document. A WMC describes a list of WMS layers. The latest Mapbuilder =
supports the
OGC's draft OWS Context specification which extends the WMC to include: =
WFS layers, GeoRSS layers, GML Layers.

The OWS Context is rendered by the new MapPane2 and MapPaneOL widgets. =
In the next release, we plan to deprecate MapPane2 and MapPane and =
replace them
by MapPaneOL.

SLD Editor:
We now have a Styled Layer Descriptor (SLD) Editor example. A SLD =
describes whether you map features should be rendered as red fat lines =
or blue thin
lines and you can apply styles to maps.

GeoRSS:
We have some GeoRSS examples which include rendering vector layers =
SVG/VML.

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About Community Mapbuilder http://communitymapbuilder.org

Community MapBuilder is a powerful, standards compliant, open source, =
geographic mapping client which runs in a web browser. It is part of the =
OSGeo stable of quality Open Source Geospatial projects.

About OpenLayers http://openlayers.org/

OpenLayers is a browser based, open source, webmapping client which =
accesses a variety of basemaps.

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