Hi,

I am a high school web design teacher and I was wondering if you could help me.

How are web pages putting MapQuest in their sites? It is just like you are at the MapQuest site but it is in a box on the web page?

Thank you so much,

Jan

Hi, Jan,

Many Web sites, including Google Maps, Mapquest, Flickr, YouTube, and Facebook, make it easy to add widgets or other snippets of their content so that it appears on your own site.

Usually you create a free account on the site, such as MapQuest, and then log in to use their services. Once you’re logged in, you can enter an address to get a particular map, make other changes to the way you want it to look, and when you get it the way you want, you click a button and the site generates a special chunk of code just for you.

You then copy the code and paste it into your web page, and voila, the map magically appears.

The code you copy is usually a mix of HTML, JavaScript, and often very complicated links. Don’t worry about understanding the code, you just need to paste it into your Web page in the place where you want the map to appear.

Once you add the code, you can preview the page in a browser (and if you’re connected to the Internet) the map should magically appear. You can then adjust the positioning using CSS if you know how to create styles and work with the HTML around the code — just be careful not to edit or delete any of the code you copy from mapquest.

Here’s a tip about how best to paste this code into Dreamweaver: You need to paste the code into Code View, but if you use Split view, it’s easier because you can see where you are in the Web page, and in the code at the same time, making it easier to get the map into the right place in the design.

If you’re not familiar with Split View, look for three small buttons at the top-left of the screen. Click each one in turn to see the view options.

Hope that helps. I’m always happy to support teachers.

Janine

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