Choosing Tools to Visualize Data - Data Points: Visualization That Means Something - page 84

for tile-based maps, and there is support for Python. It's maintained by a
group of people who know their online mapping and do great work for both
clients and for fun, which should tell you a little something about the qual-
ity of the library.
The fun thing about Modest Maps is that it's more of a framework than a
mapping API like the one offered by Google. It provides the bare minimum
of what it takes to create an online map and then gets out of the way to let
you implement what you want. You can use tiles from different providers,
and you can customize the maps to fit with your application. For example,
Figure 3-13 has a black-and-blue theme, but you can just as easily change
that to white and red, as shown in Figure 3-25.
FIGurE 3-25 White-and-red themed map using Modest Maps
It's BSD-licensed, so you can do just about anything you want with it at no
cost. You do have to know the ropes around Flash and ActionScript, but the
basics are covered in Chapter 8, “Visualizing Spatial Relationships.”
PoLyMAP S
Polymaps is kind of like the JavaScript version of Modest Maps. It was
developed and is maintained by some of the same people and provides the