A Peek into Mapbox
First up, what is Mapbox?
“Mapbox Studio is like Photoshop, for maps” — Mapbox
Mapbox is a mapping service that rivals Google Maps. It’s geared towards developers and designers who want more customizable map options than Google Maps provides but still want strong performance. It was developed in 2010, and leaped in popularity after 2018, when Google Maps’ API increased its pricing by 1400% (from free for up to 750,000 loads per month, down to 28,000 free loads per month; for context Mapbox’s free tier includes 50,000 loads per month)
Mapbox pulls from the completely free OpenStreetMap API and layers on powerful software and Software Development Kits (SDKs) to create highly customizable and visually appealing solutions for customers ranging from custom maps design to geocoding to navigation solutions.
While there are plenty of articles out there that delve into the pros and cons of Google Maps’ API versus Mapbox’s API, and while Google Maps remains the clear industry leader, both are powerful options for developers and businesses looking to integrate mapping services to their applications.
In this article, we’ll just be taking a look at some of the more interesting things Mapbox can do:
Mapbox Studio / Custom Map Design
Mapbox comes with a quick-start example to get your map up and going with basic and clean styling:
But it also offers an ever-evolving library of style choices:
Mapbox Studio then lets you tinker with any number of components on the map, such as:
- Swapping the color palette of your maps for your desired visual effect (including color-blind accessible options)
- Adjusting the color of the sky in your map based on the time of day
- Widening or narrowing the presentation of roads
- Adding 3D buildings or terrain
- Highlighting points of interest based on your application’s userbase
Mapbox 3D
Mapbox’s 3D maps launched at the end of 2020, bringing a whole new universe of capabilities to their custom maps and resulting in some very cool creations from their Mapbox users:
Mapbox Navigation / AR
Mapbox’s navigation solution also presents opportunities for engaging maps and real-time directions, with useful features like navigation routing for electric vehicles with charging station data, or displaying custom data such as speed limit changes, congestion, or even parking spot availability at the destination.
Beyond that, Mapbox Visual integrates AR solutions to connected cameras for even more enhanced capability (particularly useful for their fleet management solutions, but certainly with much broader applications possible).
Camera integration enables real time alerts such as lane change navigation, displaying context on nearby points of interest as your arrive to your destination, or alerting to pedestrians, bicycles etc.
Conclusion
In summary, Mapbox looks like a really interesting, and relatively easy to set up and use, tool for dynamic and visually creative maps. I’ll certainly be excited to use it in my next project and to learn more about what I can do with it.