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August 23, 2006

Flash Maps API Version 3.03 is Live

The latest version of the Maps API is now available and it's one of the most exciting yet. Many of the features and updates in this release reflect on suggestions, feature requests and bug fixes reported through the yws-maps group. We appreciate your ongoing feedback as it’s crucial in order for us to build great products.

Our goal is to make sure Flash API’s powerful features are easy for you to discover and implement. In 3.03 you will find improvements to the CustomSWFMarker feature. This feature has been greatly improved with the addition of a ‚Äòloaded’ event which allows you to reference the event object and pass data to the markers, opening the door to richer and much more dynamic mashups. Learn more in our CustomSWFMarker Tutorial.

We are happy to expand the creative potential of your mashups with the new Polyline Overlay. This new feature allows you to draw lines, curves and shapes over the map based on LatLon data from an XML document. This allows you to add layers of visual information to the map and display nearly anything, such as custom routes, city zoning or airspace maps.

We have also expanded the offering of ready-to-run examples and tutorials. These are designed with simplicity in mind and let you get your mashup up and running right away with any number of our features. These new examples and tutorials, along with our existing examples, include features such as PolylineOverlay and CustomSWFMarker.

Numerous updates to the maps developer site include documentation for the new PolylineOverlay feature, which includes examples on how to add polylines to your map, and XML schema examples.
Polyline Example 1 - View XML - Download source
Polyline Example 2 - View XML - Download source

Also included in the new release of the API are numerous bug fixes and updates which include methods such as setCenterByAddressAndZoom and setCenterByLatLonAndZoom. These two methods address issues with panning, zooming and pan duration times. This release also addresses a bug with the AS-Flash API where new users of the flash component could not import certain classes. In addition, all documentation on the Maps YDN site has been updated with the new component release so you can get started right away with the latest release.
The new APIs can be found here.

JS-Flash http://maps.yahooapis.com/v3.03/fl/javascript/apiloader.js
AS-Flash http://maps.yahooapis.com/v3.03/fl/components.zip
Flex http://maps.yahooapis.com/v3.03/fl/components.zip

Chuck Freedman, Zach Graves & the Yahoo! Maps Team

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