About a year ago I had some fun integrating Google Maps into the JAlbum Chameleon skin. Recently a couple of comments had been added to this blog post suggesting some improvements, so I sat down again, tried to remember how this worked and realized a couple of improvements. IMHO this solution could now easily be integrated into the standard JAlbum Chameleon skin.

What's improved?

  • For album directories that contain multiple index pages, the Google Map on each index page now shows the images for that index page. Previously only the first index page contained a working Google Map and it included pinpoints for all index pages.
  • The old version used an iframe to plug the Google Map into the JAlbum pages. This is no longer necessary because you can now use your Google Maps API key for a complete web domain (no longer bound to a specific directory). This now makes to generate all that is needed from JAlbum itself, no need to use an extra HTML file for the iframe that you had to manually put on your server.
For some examples, see this.

If you'd want to use this Google Maps integration then:
  1. Get yourself a Google Maps API key. (Just specify the domainname and not the subdirectory where your webalbum is hosted.
  2. Download the slide.htt and index.htt files and place them in JAlbum/skins/Chameleon directory (make of backup if the originals).
  3. Specify the following user setting in Settings/Advanced/User Variables:
  • # The root where the webalbum will be hosted
    skin.webroot=/your/webalbum/root
  • # The Google MAP API key that you've have created for your site (see step 1)
    googleMapsAPIKey=
Note that I'm still using JAlbum version 8.1.5, it might not work (without changes) on newer versions of JAlbum. Actually, I'm hoping for a JAlbum skin to integrate this solution out of the box...

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