Introduction

dbox is really a collection of DHTML-based libraries for building highly interactive web-based mapping applications. The tools are meant to work directly with the MapServer web mapping system. They provide relatively autonomous functionality without restricting overall design. In fact, they were designed to be used with old fashioned elements like tables.

Functionality includes:

• dbox.js (drawing canvas and image manager)

  • applied to pre-defined image or div anchor
  • "rubber-band" box tool
  • drag pan tool
  • linear drawing tool
  • polygon drawing tool

• dLegend.js (legend manager)

  • tree-style navigation and layer control based on an XML legend file

• dContainer.js (generic, scrollable container)

  • applied to pre-defined image or div anchor

• mapserv.js (client-side coordinate management)

  • coordinates are managed completely on the client using javascript
  • MapServer is called as an image engine, no templates are used

This is a beta release; there are several known deficiencies. Feedback via the mapserver-users mailing list is more than welcome.

Sites using dbox.js

• The dbox demo that ships with the source, running on a DNR server.
• Minnesota DNR Landview
• Minnesota DNR Data Search
• Minnesota DNR county selection tool
• there are other non-DNR sites, just need to do some research

Demo

Assuming you are reading this document locally, and your setup has been properly configured (see README_install.html), the local installation of the dbox demo can be accessed here.

Download

The dbox libraries can be downloaded via the links below. Three distributions are available:

Documentation

• README_install.html (for the demo)
• javascript library jsdocs