The Google Maps application programming interface (API) allows content--such as business locations--to be added to Google Maps, as well as interactive features to display data related to those locations. This book is about programming using Google Maps API version 3, and is addressed to designers who want to create dynamic Web pages containing maps. No prior experience with JavaScript is required, as the elements of the language are presented in the book. It should be useful to beginners, as well as designers who have used the previous version of the Google Maps API.

While the book mainly addresses programming on computers, it also contains sections about programming mobile devices such as iPhones or devices that use the Android operating system. The code of all examples can be downloaded, which is a great help for testing and understanding the application. A lot of code and graphical user interface (GUI) images appear throughout the book. The complete code is presented at the end of each chapter.

The first two chapters are an introduction to the Google Maps API, and provide a comparison between versions 2 and 3. Chapter 3 is the absolute beginner’s guide to creating a map. The Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) page content, the cascading style sheets (CSS), and the JavaScript code are presented in great detail, with thorough explanations. This chapter is a bit uneven, because it describes some very basic concepts at a lower level than the material in the rest of the book. The author could have assumed that the readers had some basic HTML and JavaScript knowledge and skipped some of the sections in this chapter. The next chapter shows map options, such as customizing or adding more to the default Google Maps controls.

A large portion of the book deals with placing and controlling markers on the map. This is the main value of this API, which is primarily used to add markers, change the marker icons, add info windows for markers, and deal with large numbers of markers (for example, by grouping them in clusters). A large appendix contains the API references, and a rich index concludes the book.

The book is easy to understand, as the material is well explained and all of the code and images needed are included. Overall, it is a very useful and practical programming book.