When Google Maps go bad…
Thursday, October 30th, 2008This week I noticed that a number of google maps had stopped working out of the blue, not dying in a spectacular javascript car crash, just a subdued failure and no map.
Looking in Firefox error console I see G_MAP_TYPE is not defined; - WTF? it was working…
Well looking into it, it is an easy fix. It seems that a lot of people (myself included) have been using depreceated constant names for the maps types, and that there will be quite a few Javascript Plugins (for things like jQuery) that may need updating.
The usual (i.e. correct) types we should now be using now are:
| Old Constant name | Description | |
|---|---|---|
| G_MAP_TYPE | G_NORMAL_MAP | This map type (which is the default) displays a normal street map. |
| G_SATELLITE_TYPE | G_SATELLITE_MAP | This map type displays satellite images. |
| G_HYBRID_TYPE | G_HYBRID_MAP | This map type displays a transparent layer of major streets on satellite images. |
| G_PHYSICAL_MAP |
This map type displays maps with physical features such as terrain and vegetation. This map type is not displayed within map type controls by default. (Since 2.94) |
See: http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/reference.html#GMapType
For a bit of an actual explanation I found this post on Google Groups
