Question

I’m working on an Android app that needs to be able to display information on Google maps.

I’m considering two ways of implementing this:

1. Use the Google maps api provided for android with the MapActivity class

2. Or I could use the javascript google maps api and view the map data on my phone through a WebView rather than using a MapView.

Would anyone be able to list any advantages/disadvantages of these methods?

Would the WebView be as responsive as the Android Google Maps app?

Thanks heaps

Answer 1

I won’t go far to conclude which is the best, but still these are things that I encountered upon trying for both approach.

Customizable:

• Web View: requires you to have a web server (or at least one html page) as basis for your custom overlay via js (or perhaps you can directly draw the overlay over the WebView but having consequences to face nightmare of projecting the geoposition with the screen position)
• GMap API: overlay is drawn directly over the MapView.

Download time:

• Web View: when one write an html page for mobile view, s/he should consider the varying capability of downloading speed. If you carefully write the html page to fit for mobile download then it should be fine.
• GMap API: the data transferred is already managed by the API and should be already in effective and minimum way.

Current Issues:

• Web View: can fit to fragment mindset of Android programming
• GMap API: no news so far I heard of, hopefully they’re working on it. Since fragment is the new standard.

Cheers.