Map Kitchen [part 1]

What is Map Kitchen? It is a  series of experimental pages. Also it is a JavaScript library that will contain the functions and methods used on those pages.

Where does the name come from? We have a great FM-station in Helsinki playing experimental music. One of their best DJ's took a name 'Soul Kitchen' for his program (he is a cook). So this is thanks to DJ Soppamies for inspiring me by music.

Where does the idea come from? Many people been asking me help for applying code ideas presented in 

• marker data from a text file
• sorting by nearest location
• switching z-index of a marker
• two-way interactive sidebar

I was exploring source codes of those pages and I did not understand much. No wonder that people been asking for my help. So I decided to start from scratch.

The series will use CSV text files as the data source because it been asked a lot. Still you can use any source:

• inline hardcoded
• XML/KML
• JSON
• feeds
• Spreadsheets API
• TSV

I been trying to write all the functions and methods to be programming modules for any kind of data source processing.

I already blogged a few methods how to generate CSV-formatted text files. Many of you have those files already from various sources.

When does it start? Just now, we start putting the CSV-data on maps. The first part is very simple: polyline from CSV.