Re: growing the map as the window resizes

Actually, I don't even care about resizing. I just want the initial
load of the map div to fill whatever window space is available after
the header div is constructed, regardless of the user's screen size.

On Feb 23, 1:33 am, Rossko <ros...@culzean.clara.co.uk> wrote:
> This one?
>http://econym.org.uk/gmap/basic19.htm

No, because I can't predict how much of the user's screen will be
required to present the header div. That depends on the user's
default settings for text presentation - typefaces, point sizes, etc.
All browsers modern enough to recognize the DIV concept do an
excellent job of determing an appropriate DIV size to fit around fixed
content (text + graphics). That applies to the 3-section heading
block which Google Maps uses and to the single-section heading block
which I use. I don't want to do anything to interfere with that.

In the vast majority of Web pages (including this one that you are
reading!), the content of the page is fixed before it even begins to
load. So it is the browser which determines whether to present
horizontal or vertical scrollbars to enable the user to view parts of
the page that won't fit in the user's window, and it is the browser
which manages reorganization of that content in response to the user's
resizing of the window.

But in its Maps application, Google has taken the approach that "we
will use only the space that the user's window makes available to us,
and we will modify the content of the map div _during_loading_ in
order to fit that space exactly." Because Google Maps does that,
there is no unused space around the map graphic *and* there are no
scroll bars for it, regardless of the size of the user's window. (As
an alternative to scrolling, Maps provides a click-and-drag function
to give the user access to parts of the map that are not initially
visible.)

All of that functionality is included in Google's own code (HTML + CSS
+ Javascript + ???). There's even more - the map content of the
window responds directly to any resizing of the available space that
is done by the browser under the user's control. (That's why I don't
care about resizing - I know that Google's code will take care of it
once the map div is declared.) However, only selected parts of that
extensive functionality are exposed to us developers through the
Application Programming Interface which Google has provided.

The original poster and I (and doubtless many other developers) aren't
asking for much. We just want to know how to declare a map div which
will display like the one at maps.google.com, so that what we build
using the Maps API will behave in similar fashion. (My own workaround
of a fixed-height div is unsatisfactory.) Google does it, so it must
be possible. But I have not yet found any other application on the
Web which does a similar thing in a way that I can analyze. And I
haven't yet found a Google Maps expert who is able and willing to
explain what ought to be a simple and straightforward process. If
there is an explanation somewhere that I've missed, please provide a
link to it, and I'll thank you forever.

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