Create a Website
To create web mapping applications, the first skill you have to master is how to make a basic website. This requires a knowledge of HTML and CSS. We use HTML for marking up your content, e.g, indicating text that should be bold, italics, headers, inserting hyperlinks, pictures, etc.,. CSS CSS is used to style the web page, i.e, ensuring that the markups and the structure of the page appear exactly how the web designer desires it.
Once you learn how to build a simple web page, the next step is to learn a bit of JavaScript. JavaScript is a web programming language that is integrated with HTML to add interactivity to web pages. For example, when a HTML button is clicked, a JavaScript function may be called to execute a process on the computer, and the information is then passed back to the user.
The spatial functions contained in web mapping applications are contained in special web mapping libraries. The web application must reference these libraries similar to how thrid-party libraries are referenced in Python. Once the libraries are referenced, their functions can be used within the web application. Major GIS companies have their own web mapping libraries. In addition, there are serveral open source libraries such as Open Layers and Leaflet. In this section, we will work with OpenLayers, but you can choose to work with ESRI JavaScript API, OpenLayers, etc.