The Nokia Maps on Windows Phone 8: Part 1

Here you see a video after changing all the properties, we will see in order according to the code shown above:


Image 1.8 Map after tap on the button Heading.

In this screen, we see that the map of the centre is turned to the left, if we had instead decreased the value of the property Heading, we had a rotation to the right of the centre of the map.


Image 1.9 Map after tap on the button Pitch.


Image 1.10 Map after tap on the button color mode

In this image, after performing a tap on the button color mode, you have activated the Dark, suitable in low light conditions. I remember that the possible values are dark and light.


Image 1.11 Map after tap on the button Landmarsk mode.

This makes three-dimensional visualization with the Egyptian Museum and Piazza Carlo Alberto, famous places that are located in Turin, this view is possible if we set the property to True LandmarskMode.


Image 1.12 Map after the tap on the button Pedestrian features enabled.

When the property PedestrianFeaturesEnabled is set to true, that is one way for the use of the map for a pedestrian.

Manage multiple levels

Suppose we want to show on our map points of interest, such as cinemas, fuel stations or restaurants. With this function, all this is possible; we need to resort to the class MapLayer, which contains a collection of objects of type MapOverlay, representing the points of interest that we want to show. Once the collection of objects, we can superimpose the new layer to the map, showing in this way the results obtained after the research phase. Consider this code example.
We define a method that takes two arguments, the first of type string that matches the name of the place to be searched; the second is an object of type Map, that is part of the namespace Microsoft.Phone.Maps.Controls that will pass the reference of the control MapLocation that we defined in the screen. Let's re-use the classes Geolocator and GeocodeQuery that we have already seen in previous articles, so we will not dwell on them again. The novelty lies in the two new classes MapOverlay and MapLayer. The first represents all objects belonging to the final layer then we're going to overlay the current map. We define a new object of type MapOverlay and we have the value of the property GeoCoordinate with the latitude and longitude that we get from the event QueryCompleted exposed by the class GeocodeQuery. We also have another class properties MapOverlay called Content, being of type Object, we can define any object. We insert a control Ellipse, that will serve to show the point of interest that you have chosen; you should consider this part of the code.
We will also show a second object MapOverlay containing the name of the Town and Country; we'll find the Address property, at the time of the query.
After this activity, we need to define a new object MapLayer. This class contains within it a collection of type MapOverlay, where using the Add() method, add one or more objects. The iteration remains exactly as a normal list, with the difference that will, typed. We cannot define or add a different object.
We access the Map Layers class. Within the event, tap the button btnFindCoordinate and insert the method invocation FindPosition, passing as parameters the name of the place made up of a string variable, plus the reference to the control map called MapLocation.
Before proceeding with application debugging, it is necessary to enable the capability ID_CAP_LOCATION and ID_CAP_LOCATION, otherwise the application will not work. In exploring solutions, we expand the directory Properties and click on the file WMAppManifest.xml as shown.


Image 1.13 The Solution Explorer section in Visual Studio.


Image 1.14 The Features section that we find in the file WMAppManifest.

After we added the necessary items for the creation of our layer and the capability necessary, we need to update the map, this is possible by enhancing the method exposed by the control NokiaMaps Layers. This is always a collection that accepts an objects of type MapLayer. Also in this activity, we see the result that we will have on the map. We start the application, on the Home screen do a tap on Button Layers, arrived at the screen, we type the name of a place, as Caselle Torinese. If the search is successful, here is how the map looks after the search.


Image 1.15 The map with the new layer, after searching for a location.

Conclusion

In this article on Geolocation, we started to see some of the features of Nokia Maps control. We started looking at how to leverage the Zoom property that allows you to zoom in or out the contents of the map and we saw all the possibilities for viewing, starting from Aerial to Terrain. Then was the ways to work on other properties to further customize the map, by the way Heading that allows the rotation of the map of the center. Then was the property PedestrianFeaturesEnabled, that adapts the content for use when we walk and finish, explaining how to manage one or more levels. In other words, to define a custom layer, we can overlay the current map to show information such as locations, points of interest and more. In the next article, we will see what placeholders are, how to define and create them and then superimpose the control NokiaMaps.

See also

Another important place to find a huge amount of Windows Phone related articles is the TechNet Wiki itself. The best entry point is Windows Phone Resources on the TechNet Wiki.