Getting a Google Maps API Key

On June 22th Google announced that from that day on, every new implementation of the Maps API requires the usage of an API key.

This is very important for anyone that wants to use my Google Maps plugin for CKEditor, because now you must get your key in order to use it.
The basic usage of the API allows 25.000 free maps loads per day, and you can have one key for each domain that you want to use. From that point you'll have to get a paid license. This is more or less the same, they have adjusted the way that somethings are counted but the important part is that previously the free usage encouraged signing the requests with an API key but now it's a forced requirement.

Getting an API key isn't too hard because the process has been streamlined and you mostly have to agree to the Terms and Conditions, you can find here their instructions, but I'm gonna provide some screenshots so you can view how easy it is.

Step by step guide

First, go to https://console.developers.google.com/flows/enableapi?apiid=maps_backend&keyType=CLIENT_SIDE&reusekey=true

You'll get a screen like this:

As this is probably a new project you just have to click Continue.
Now you'll get some notifications and progress and you'll end up with a screen similar to this one

This doesn't look right, the "You don't have permission to create an API key" message is strange, but the fact is that the "Create" button is enabled and it works, so you can define the allowed Referrer sites, or leave that blank now and adjust it later.
Click "Create" and then you'll get your API key

Click the Copy icon at its right side and you're almost done. If you have already the Google Maps plugin, then open the CKEditor configuration file, add a new entry "googleMaps_ApiKey" and then assign there the value that you got:

Now if you load CKEditor with the Google Maps plugin, the Maps dialog should work, but the static images will fail, this is because we have enabled the Google Maps API, but you need also to enable the usage of the Static Maps API with this key (and also the Street View API if you want to allow your users to use a StreetView image as the preview)

So open https://console.developers.google.com/apis/api/static_maps_backend?project=_  and this time, instead of creating a new project we will use the one that has been created previously:

Then click the Enable button

And this step is done, just repeat it for the Street View API in this link:
https://console.developers.google.com/apis/api/street_view_image_backend?project=_

Then the Geocoding so the searches also work in the dialog:
https://console.developers.google.com/apis/api/geocoding_backend?project=_

And this is over!

Summary

Please, keep in mind that these steps are the current ones as of July 2016, Google might change things or even depending on some settings on your account you might see different things, but the end goal is to get a Google Maps API key, enable also the usage of that key for the Static Maps and then put it in a googleMaps_ApiKey entry in the configuration of your CKEditor instance.

Additional notes

I think that the first time that you try to get an API key you'll get this screen:

and from them on when you try to get another key for a new domain, the dialog that it's used is the one that I've shown at first.

Also, at the top of the screen you might get a banner to sign up for Google Cloud, but if you plan to stay within the free plan limits you don't need that.

Updated SingleSite License price

Today I've changed the price of the Single Site licenses for the three CKEditor plugins from 15 to 10 euros.

The new price is already active, and I think that I've changed all the references to it.

Besides that, we all know that when you miss an offer by a few days it leaves a bad taste in our mouth, so I've opted to go ahead and I've refunded also those 5 euros to all the people that have bought a license in the last month == since 1st of January.

Let's call it a birthday gift :-D

I hope to finish some testing this weekend and release updated versions (mainly bugfixes and some little features) for all the plugins.

Black Friday discount

During the rest of the month, I've reduced 20% off the price in the three plugins for CKEditor that I sell here

SimpleUploads,

Google Maps

Image Maps

That means that single site licenses now are 12€ and OEM licenses 40€. I still haven't modified the pages in this blog, but the prices in FetchApp are already adjusted, so right after clicking the first Pay button you'll see the correct price.

Remember that the three plugins are compatible with CKEditor 3.6 up to the current 4.3 and future updates to add new features or bug fixes are included, it's a one time payment. This offer will end on 1st of December.

(no, I don't really expect that anybody will care about this, but hey!, why not to offer this deal?)

 

 

Demo videos for the Google Maps plugin for CKEditor

I've realize that I haven't announced it here, but about a month ago I spent some time creating two videos showing most of the features available in the Google Maps plugin for CKEditor.

The idea behind the plugin is that although being able to play with the demo page and test the features by yourself, sometimes you might not be aware of all the available options, and despite my horrible pronunciation (I beg you pardon) i decided that it would be good to provide a video explaining the features available in the plugin.

Of course, creating such thorough explanation means that I found little issues, I used different browsers to test the features and record the video so in the end besides the videos I released a new version of the plugin with some improvements (and testing the dialogs was when I felt the need to improve the uploads in the CKEditor dialogs, it was a pity that some features like adding a KML file or a new icon couldn't been done by drag & drop from my computer)

The first video is available here:  Introduction to Google Maps plugin for CKEditor

It explain the main features of the two first tabs of the dialog, and how the map is rendered in the final page. Most of the options are just what you expect and you can see any change in the preview map of the dialog.

Some of the features that I added thanks to recording this video was the ability to start with the StreetView of a location or with a rotated map.

The second video is this one: Drawing shapes on Google Maps with CKEditor.

In order to record this video I finished an option that I've had in the works for some time but I never had the time to test it, drawing circles.

The video starts showing how to place markers, change the icon of the marker, how a simple CKEditor is embedded in the dialog to allow editing the popup that shows when you click on a marker, or how to insert a simple option so that the visitor can get driving directions from his location to that place.

Then it shows the other drawing options, lines, polygons and circles, all can be controlled to adjust the color, width, opacity; so you get the map that you want.

Please, keep the closed captions on and the volume low, but watch the videos and if you have some question about them or you think that I can explain something else that I've missed, then drop me a note.

Updates for the GoogleMaps plugin

It seems that I haven't write here anything about the Google Maps plugin for a whole year, and so some people might think that this is a dead project but it's far from that! it's alive and under continuous little improvements.

A summary of the new features since 3.1 (one year ago):

• 3.2:
  • It's possible to delete single points in lines and areas.
  • Enabled Traffic and Weather layers.
• 3.2.x:
  • Option to use custom icons in the markers.
  • It's possible to edit lines and areas.
• 3.3:
  • Button in the editor for markers to insert a "Destination" link.
• 3.3.x
  • Compatibility with CKEditor 4.

Besides that list, there are other adjustments to improve performance, add new translations, and of course fixing all the reported bugs but that list is boring :-)

A quick review of those new features:

Editing of lines and areas

Version 3.1 finally brought back the option to create Lines and Areas but the options to edit them or remove some points wasn't possible at the moment. Fortunatelly after some time those features were available and I added them to the maps editor.

New Layers

Sometimes Google adds a new option in the map, the Traffic layer allows to show the state of the road traffic in the map and the Weather shows the the typical sun/clouds/storm... icons overlayed if the zoom isn't too close.

Directions

This as a common request: an option to set in the window of a marker a link that provides the driving directions to arrive to a place. Now there's an icon in the embedded editor that inserts such a link for the current marker and when clicked it will launch Google Maps with the requested data.

CKEditor 4

This is the latest "feature" that I've added. Although most of the code of v4 is backwards compatible with CKEditor 3.x there are some changes that required some debugging to find out a solution to understand the problem and also the excesive padding in the default skin for v4 means that the contents of many fields were not correctly displayed.

At the moment I think that everything is working correctly, but I still want to perform more tests before being confident that I've tested everything (and so far I'm already getting tired of the problems caused by the dialogs in v4).

Anyway, here's a new demo to test Google Maps in CKEditor 4.

 

Google Maps plugin with lines and areas

Version 3.1 of GoogleMaps plugin

Finally after all a very long wait I can say that the Google Maps plugin for CKEditor is ready, it includes all the previous features and uses the latests versions of both CKEditor (3.6.2) and Google Maps (3.7)

As I explained in previous posts the main missing feature was the ability to create and edit lines (paths) and areas and recently Google added this missing API. So after founding a little free time I've included these features as well as checking and testing everything fixing some little problems along the way. (One such problem is that previously I think that CKEditor managed to automatically resize the dialogs to fit their contents, but now they are shown beyond the dialog boundaries. Some people have reported such problems when they try to add a lot of images to the Smileys dialog).

A summary of features

The plugin allows to insert a Google Maps into your pages easily without any previous knowledge.

It's possible to use any size for the map, while you're in editing mode a static preview of the map is shown (if the size is bigger than 640x640 px the image is scaled because that's the maximum size for static maps)

A preview/edit dialog is used to move the map as desired as well as setting the zoom level or various features like map types or available controls.

A search field is available to find the location that you want.

It's possible to add several overlays on the map like markers, text, lines and areas. It's also possible to use a KML or KMZ file to add complex sets of features after creating it with Google Earth for example.

The plugin can generate either static images, normal javascript maps or static images with the option to turn them into normal javascript maps. (the static image doesn't support the same set of features than the full map: texts and Kmls won't be shown)

How to get it?

Please, use the main page of the Google Maps plugin for CKEditor.

Deprecation of old browsers or bad pages

I would like to use this message to announce that from now on this plugin as well as any other that I develop won't support pages in Quirks modes and versions 6 and 7 of Internet Explorer.

This means that I won't test any plugin in those cases, and if someone reports a problem with such situations then the output might be that I add a check so that the plugin refuses to load instead of spending several hours to find a workaround for such problems.

Of course, the visitor of the page will be able to view the map correctly with any browser (until Google decides to pull the plug for those browsers), but when the admin is trying to edit the content he should use a modern browser and your administration should use a Standards rendering mode.

Edit 6-december-2012:

A summary of new features since 3.1(like compatibility with CKEditor 4) can be found in this post.

Public release of new Google Maps for CKEditor might finally see the light of day

For quite some time I've got almost ready a port of the Google Maps plugin for FCKeditor to the latest version of each API: Google Maps 3 and CKEditor 3, but there was a major problem that I wasn't happy about and that was the lack in GMaps 3 of the ability to create and edit polylines and areas.

I could have go ahead and state that it's finished without such feature, but that wouldn't be honest.

Or I could have worked out my own implementation, but I already created such code in the old times and I wouldn't like to do it again because I can't spend enough time polishing any issues and making sure that the code works correctly and that it's correctly optimized.

So I waited and waited...

And finally, yes, today they have stated that they plan to release it in the first quarter.

With this light at the end of the tunnel I'll try to verify that everything else keeps working as I left it some months ago and I'll be very happy to state that it's finally released even if there are some other missing features from v2.

GoogleMaps for CKEditor 3 is almost ready

After lots of work to port all the code to the new architecture both of CKEditor 3 and Google Maps 3, the final version is almost ready.

The missing parts

First and foremost: there are three features available previously that won't be ready in this first version because they aren't available in the Google Maps 3 API and I think that it's better to wait for them to port them instead of doing some partial work that requires time and then it will be thrown away.

These features are:

• Ability to create and edit lines and areas. Tracked in Issue 2432. In the first versions of the plugin (1.x) I coded some basic editing capabilities for lines showing fake markers, but I think that lot of us are waiting for the port of this feature and hopefully they can port it soon.
• Option to show/hide the Overview Map at the bottom right corner. Tracked in Issue 1470. Ok, it's not really that important, so it won't be a problem for most of the people.
• Option to show the Google search widget. Tracked in Issue 1697. It adds a nice touch to some pages, but it isn't really needed for most of the maps.

Of course my biggest concern is the editing of lines and areas. For the moment the editing dialog is able to load existing lines and areas from previous versions and change their properties (width, color, opacity), but not to edit their points. As a partial workaround you can use a KML file, but of course that requires the use of a program to create such file. The good thing about KML files is that they can contain lots of data, but if you want to generate a static image then this won't work (Issue 207)

With regards to the CKEditor side, the integration of the dialogs as elements inside the page and the default CSS provided makes it almost impossible to correctly show the maps inside the dialog: there's a CSS rule that tries to reset several values for all the content inside a CKEditor instance, but the way that it's written breaks the CSS inheritance and only the styles that are applied to one element are shown correctly, it can't inherit things like text-align or cursor from its parents, and any <input> that you try to insert doesn't have the default OS styles (in fact it doesn't have any border or background at all).

So some elements that previously were shown inside the map as info windows (text, lines and areas properties) now have their own CKEditor dialogs because it was a nightmare trying to put the controls in a simplified UI.

But despite moving those controls to their own dialogs, there are still some visual problems with the maps: the drag cursor isn't shown, the pointer cursor is instead a text cursor, all the texts are aligned to the left...

The good things

So those are the bad news, let's see the nice side of the changes

The Maps API v3 doesn't require to sign for a key, so that's one step less to worry about, and it can help a lot if you host your site under different domains.

The overall speed is improved, both GMaps and CKEditor APIs are part of the improvement as they have been redesigned to improve performance. Also, in CKEditor the dialogs aren't any longer a new iframe, so they share the same scope with the page, and once the GMaps API has been loaded it doesn't require another check when the dialog is launched again.

I've been trying to reorganize some parts of the code in order to have a better base planning for future enhancements (I won't make any statement about what or when because they might be a distant future),  but now the code should be easier to make some kind of improvements.

Some little bugs have been squashed, but for the moment and until it's tested in more environments it can include unexpected problems. An example of something that I didn't ever test previously but now I think that it will work (I'll try to test it correctly) is having two editor instances in the same page and editing the maps in one or both of them.

What's left

I've ready almost all the code, now it needs to be tested more thoroughly, tested across some browsers (no, I won't care about old versions), test that it reads correctly data from the previous versions of the plugin.

Also it needs to try to improve the UI in the dialogs, they way that they are done in CKEditor makes it a little harder to get nice results, but I think that I'm finally getting the grip about that and with some tricks it's getting better, although I won't be happy until I really see that it works as expected and not some "it's not too bad".

Then the basic documentation, how to install the plugin and some user docs, I hope to reuse as much as possible from the previous version.

And then it will be finally ready (I guess that in a week from now).

No, it won't be open source. As the v2 of the plugin this one will be available only under a license, people that collaborated for the previous versions will get this one shortly.

With regards to v2, once v3 gets all the missing features I will provide it for free 3 months after the release of the updated v3 version. I don't see any reason to keep that code locked for ever if it has been deprecated by a newer version.

Nesting dialogs in CKEditor

The task of upgrading the Google Maps plugin from FCKeditor to CKEditor is getting closer to the end, and in this post I'll show a few screenshots about doing little crazy things in CKEditor (ok, I have done this kind of crazy things previously).

First, let's start with an almost normal CKEditor instance, the only difference is the last button that lanches the new plugin

This dialog has four tabs and below them a Google Maps instance. Showing there an instance that was visible in any tab was one of the first problems that I needed to workaround.

As there was no previous map, it defaults to the third tab in order to ease the task of doing a search of our desired location. Now I'm not searching for anything special, so let's see the fourth tab. There it's possible to add markers, texts and in the future lines and areas as well as KML files. So let's add a marker by clicking the tool and then a point in the map

 After clicking the map, a new dialog is shown to edit the properties of the marker, the tooltip that will be shown, the width of the info window and its contents (at the moment it's still missing the button to change the icon color)

Look carefully, yes, it's a CKEditor instance nested in the dialog, so it's possible to write some nice formatted text, and a picture or a link. Of course, that means nesting another dialog!

 From bottom to top: Main CKEditor instance, Google Maps dialog, Marker dialog (with another CKEditor instance), and Link dialog.

After closing the link and marker dialogs we can get back to the edited map and test the marker in the first tab (ok, all the code still isn't hooked up, but you get the idea):

The nested CKEditor instance seems to work nicely without any need to do any strange workaround, but I still have to test it thoroughly because the problems might arise only under certain conditions. Anyway I'm happy with that part.

 

Google Maps v3

Just last week Google announced the third version of the Google Maps API.

It's a full rewrite, so for the moment it can't be used to replace the current maps in most of the sites (features like polylines and polygons are missing at the moment), but it can be tested and I might start porting the current plugin for FCKeditor to use the new API.

Why should I care about it if it isn't ready?

One of the first claims that you see is the compatibility with mobile browsers, that's nice. Improved speed is also welcome. Modularization means that less code is loaded and everything will work better, but....

NO KEYS REQUIRED!!!

(Sorry for the caps)

So when the new version of the plugin is released, you'll be able to use it in any site without worrying about getting and storing those stupid keys. If you have a site that it's served under different names it will work without any extra magic. OK, one problem might remain: the static maps do still require the key, but if it isn't available the rest of the functionality should work.

Things might go like this:
A version 2.3 for use in FCKeditor 2.x with the Maps Api 3
A version 3.0 for use in CKeditor 3.x with the Maps Api 3. This one will be easy to remember :-)

Of course, that 3.0 version might take a while, the v3 maps must get back enough of the functionality from the current version so it can be used without problems, and CKEditor v3 must be released and then I have to rewrite all the code so it can work with the new CKEditor API.

As you can imagine, rewriting all the code is not a pleasant task, and due to the work with new versions some unexpected bugs might arise that needs to be fixed at the other side.

GoogleMaps 1.98

This release fixes a little problem using the GoogleMaps_PublicKey setting and adds Chinese and Norwegian translation.

Of course, no new work is expected in the 1.x versions.

GoogleMaps v2.1 finished (including user docs and bug fixes)

Finally I've updated the documentation for the end user regarding the new features available in the Google Maps plugin version 2.1, but I've fixed also some little details that did appear after the initial testing period.

All the current customers of the v2 will receive shortly a mail with the new zip.

Some clarifications regarding the plugin:

If you want to use the plugin for free, then you must use the v1 code. It's free to use wherever you want, you can test it in that page and then download it and install it in your server to use with FCKeditor.

If you appreciate the work involved to make that version work, or if you want to use all the new features and want to use the v2 plugin, then you must contact me (until I setup an automatic system), the license for a single site is 15€, if you are any kind of OEM or company that want to use it for several sites, you can get a general license for 50€.

Of course, you should really test the free version before trying to use the v2, as the requirements and setup procedure are just the same. If you have the v1 working, to upgrade to the v2 you just need to replace the plugin folder and that's all, no extra job. There's no online demo or download trial of the v2 plugin, this is all javascript, so it's not worth for me trying to implement any kind of security to avoid the people that want to get everything for free.

Text markers and static maps with GoogleMaps plugin

I've finished the coding of the new 2.1 version of the GoogleMaps plugin, the main highlights for this new version are:

Text markers.

You can add your text on the map, aimed at providing an always visible caption for the details that you want to remark.

The title field of normal markers now it's shown as a text besides the marker, and you can add any other text in the map using the Text tool.

This feature is based on the ELabels script provided by Mike Williams, I have simplify it a little to remove unwanted features and decrease its size.

Static images generation.

Ok, the previous version did generate a static image and then loaded the map, but this version does provide an option to not generate any script at all, and most important: it's able to edit again those images.

In the previous versions you were able to copy the image around or manually remove the script from source code, but if you tried to edit it again, it didn't recognize any of its data, so it wasn't very useful. Now it can generate the image without any scripts and then recover all the data that it's used on that image (I mean: data as text labels, areas, kml overlays... won't be recovered because they aren't used in the static maps).

This can be useful if you want to provide the option in a kind of forum where anybody can create data, but you don't want them to use any script due to obvious security reasons.

The scripts now are precompressed using YUICompressor in order to improve loading time, if you want to use the original files in order to make any adjustment or debug anything you just have to rename the files.

Now I need to update the docs and then it will be send to the current users. If you want the script and until I set up an automated system you can mail me at amla70 at gmail dot com and I'll provide you the PayPal info.

The GoogleMaps 2 plugin is finally ready

It has taken quite longer than I expected in order to get the new functionality ready, but there was lot of internal changes, some small ones, other big ones that required testing, adjusting, fixing bugs, then a new idea to add a little detail and all the testing was needed again.

I have already explained the main ideas behind the new version: removing some limitations, and giving more power to the user. Of course there are lots of other things that can be done with the Google Maps API, but it would requiere someone a lot of dedicated time in order to put everything in a single interface, and also make it usable by plain users (the ones that ask "the installer now says 'Next', should I press it?)

Unfortunately as this is just javascript and this version is not open source I can't provide a demo so you can test it because then it would be trivial to copy it. I don't think it's worth my time to write/use any kind of obfuscation so you'll have to judge based on the 1.97 demo and checking the new manual. (an advice to any 'smart guy': don't bother trying to guess filenames, there's no zip uploaded and if I upload the data, it will be available only under a password protection), only the install guide is available.

 

What's new for GoogleMaps v2

Some people might want to hear about this.

Lately I've been working on the new version of the Google Maps plugin, there are several parts that I've wanted to improve for a long time, and finally I've decided that it's the time to start coding it.

New loading system.

The maps won't stop the rest of the page, the google js files are loaded only after the rest of the page has been loaded or it can be delayed until the user really wants to use the map.

Static preview

While the full map isn't ready a static preview will be shown. This means also that the map will be visible for thos with javascript disabled.

Colors.

Yes, different markers should have different colors. Ditto for the lines or areas. Also width, opacity...

Areas

Ups, did I said that?, yes, multiple lines and multiple areas. Note: the static preview doesn't show the areas, it's a limitation of the static API.

Html comments

Embedding an instance of FCKeditor in a dialog used inside FCKeditor? are you crazy? maybe, but it works.

Selection of features.

Select the controls that you want to show: zoom standard/small, area overview, scrolling...

Loading KML files

That way you can import external data or create a complex map in Google Earth and display it online.

 

Over 60% of that is already coded, at least the most complex features, so I am optimistic that it will be ready "soon", but testing and then writing the new documentation might be a stop point, it's boring and sucks, mostly because the people doesn't read it and ask basic questions over and over again.

I guess that it sound very good, maybe too good to be true, but there is one caveat: Surely it won't be free. It will be cheap, but it will require buying a license as coding all of that means a lot of work, and you might have heard that there is some economic crisis around there. The current version will be available for free and you can use it, but if you want the advanced features you'll need to spend a little money on it.

 

Maps plugin with a nice preview

As I mentioned in my last entry, the recent update to the Google Maps static API menas that finally it was time to release the new version. As you can see in the version log the feature to use a preview inside the editor was added some months ago, but it only worked for hybrid maps, it was slightly confusing, so in order to avoid wasting the time replying over and over again (yes, there is people that doesn't read the docs and even ask how to install this plugin) I decided to not release it except for the people that had cooperated in its development.

There's still a difference between the final map and the preview: the static api doesn't allow to use encoded (compressed) paths, so until they fix this issue the path won't be shown. Yes, I could get the points and generate the path, but I think that it's more work that it is worth, after all this is just a preview inside the editor

Check it in the demo and upgrade your version, it's a drop in replacement.

The static GoogleMaps now allow to use all the map types

We have been waiting for it since it was launched, and now finally they have allowed to use all the map types with the static API.

I guess that means that I finally should release a new version of the GoogleMaps plugin :-)

FckGoogleMaps is dead. Long live FCKMaps

It might take still a while to have everything finished, but I've started to code the changes necessary to be able to use not only the Google Maps, but also the MS Virtual Earth is starting to work at the moment, and probably I will add also support for Yahoo Maps.

I'm a little disappointed, specially the quality of Yahoo maps outside USA seems quite poor, Virtual Earth also lacks somehow in the quality of the images, although the Bird's eye view is very good.

Anyway, I'll keep on coding at least the MS version and then I'll see the outcome and if I'm still willing to continue with the Yahoo maps.

Next version of the GoogleMaps plugin

Lately I've worked to do some improvements in the Google Maps plugin, you can already check the current status in the live demo.

One of the new features is that now the map remembers the type of map that has been selected, and now it's possible to select also the Terrain view. I guess that this isn't anything special, some might even wonder why I didn't add it earlier, but there are so many things to do that I just can't afford them all.

A more interesting change (mainly due to the opportunities that it can offer) is the usage of the Static maps. When you add a map you'll no longer see the white area with the Google logo, instead it will show a preview of the map. I haven't added the markers of polyline to the static map, and that's because I'm not fully satisfied with the current status.

First, it isn't possible to select the type of map, so the user will think that I'm gonna generate a wrong map because they see the map view instead of satellite as they have selected.

And the second problem is that the generated images can't be any larger than 512x512, so if I try to request a preview for a map of 600x400 Google sends an error message. In the end I've checked the dimensions of the map and restricted them in the static preview to those 512x512, so the image will be shown distorted, but at least the user won't see a X.

If those problems are solved (I think that only Google can provide a fix, I don't foresee any workaround), I have some other nice ideas (mainly one: load just a image and then the rest of the JS API on demand), but I don't see any reason to start coding them if people will complain that they won't work correctly.

The last important change for the FCKeditor plugin (besides some bug fixes related to the comments in the markers) is an idea from Enrico Danilo Visciola, allowing to have 2 different API Keys, and even asking to the user in the moment what's the key that they want to use. Based on this change I think that it will be possible to include the plugin inside the Write Area extension and as long as the web where you are using it doesn't filter out javascript you'll be able to include GoogleMaps with a few clicks.

Of course, there are many other things waiting to be done, if you want to sponsor some development just contact me, or if you want to cooperate with some code I will be grateful for your contribution.

GoogleMaps in FCKeditor

A little while ago I took the task suggested by dynamical.biz to implement a plugin for FCKeditor that would allow any end user to easily create a Google Map that can be inserted in the content and so it will be shown in the final page as he wanted.

It isn't an easy task because there are several little problems, mainly the fact that any javascript code is automatically protected so it won't be available in the DOM. Also, the plugin should be able to update the existing maps because we know that while you are editing something looks mostly OK, but when you finally see all the final page maybe you wish that it could have been a little bigger, or smaller, the map should have been centered a little to the north...

But if I'm writing this post is because of course it did work, so you can test it online

The integration with any installation is quite straightforward and is clearly documented, the only special thing is that you must get a Google Maps API key, but even that step is very easy.

Go, download it and play with it. For developers its code might have very interesting surprises, I'm not saying that the code is perfect, but I think that it does open the doors to make other plugins and code that previously were thought as "too difficult" (for example handling Flash files with the SWFObject, or being able to show at least a simple textarea to edit comments of PHP code). If you read this code (sorry if there aren't enough comments or everything is a little mixed up for the moment), you might find the bits that you need. And if you find this code useful, please contribute back your own ideas, plugins or why not?, a little donation