Map Tile Server
What is a map tile server?
Map Tiles server is a software that generates map tiles. Map tiles are small square images, usually 256x256 pixels, forming an interactive map on web page or mobile application. These tiles display geospatial objects at different levels of zoom and detail. Map tiling is a rather new technique used to replace map services that generates a single image for the entire map. Tiling significantly improves user interaction and responsiveness.
To use interactive maps, developers usually choose a library capable of displaying such maps. There are at least a few open-source libraries available: OpenLayers, Leaflet, and MapLibre. The mentioned libraries use multiple map tile protocols. Strues-maps.lt supports tiling using TMS (also known as XYZ tiling) protocol. To increase the speed and responsiveness of apps, it is recommended to use JPEG compression of images.
Use cases of interactive maps
Interactive maps provide website visitors with custom data on top of generic basemaps. The most common use of maps is to display company assets, company headquarters, or customer service departments. Guide agencies might use interactive maps for touring and regional information. Camping companies might use interactive maps for custom hiking, cycling, and walking trails. Skiing resorts might overlay our base maps with available slopes. Last-mile companies might use our maps to organize routes of parcels from the nearest hub to their final destination. Real estate agencies might use interactive maps to inform customers of the surroundings of properties they are offering. NGOs might publish geographic data on the spread of human or animal diseases. Any of these cases will use a map tile server to provide compelling visualizations of their data.
Our map tile server is compatible with any javascript library supporting XYZ or TMS tiling protocol like OpenLayers, Leaflet, or MapLibre. Using our server reduces development, administration, and infrastructure costs. We also provide software developers with API documentation and tutorials that contain working examples.
Tile server has ready-to-use boundaries of administrative divisions. Maps are rich with land use areas like residential, industrial, parking, farmland, forest, grass, and wetland for those interested in area use trends. There is also detailed road data like service roads, tracks, footways, cycleways, taxiways, motorways, rails, etc. Hydrographic features are also included in maps like water areas and waterways. Water area data includes basins, water bodies, reservoirs, and so on. Waterways like ditches, streams, rivers, drains, piers, dams, and canals are visible in our base maps. At higher zoom levels one can observe detailed street maps, buildings, and places of interest like airports, shopping centers, amusement parks, hospitals, colleges, and universities.
Getting started with strues-maps.lt
Using hosted tiling server allows developers to speed up development and accelerate the deployment of interactive maps. Our tile server supports fast response times for tiles at zoom levels from 6 to 15. We support domain configuration for cross-origin resource sharing. We also support customizable tile throttling per API key or per IP address. Building such functionality from the ground up requires tangible development and maintenance efforts.