Shogmaster
Member
Everyone here loves google maps, right? Right. So you already know how cool it is to zoom in and out of the maps in real time, right? Right. Wouldn't it be cool to use that feature on the road (literally) on your laptop without internet connection?
So in couple of weeks, I'll be flying to Cincinnasty OH so I can help my little sister move her dog (which the vet deemed not flyable due to some wacky medical condition) across country to their new home in suburbs of Oakland CA via a car trip. For that, I was preparing a triptic with the Google maps. I was just gonna cap JPEGs of the various parts of the map to save on my brand new Tablet PC, and have one of us use them to help the driver nevigate.
So I googled the trip from Cincy to Oakland. And was just zooming in and out various parts of the trip to plan things out. As I was copying and pasting parts of that route, it nagged on me how cruel it was to be able to zoom into any part of the route while connected to the internet, but we'd have to look at static and crappy JPEGS while on the road. Then I asked myself, why couldn't I just cache the google maps route on the TPC as a file? Is it even possible with the zooming functionality intact? I aimed to find out. After an hour or two of dicking around, I think I found out the method to bring that functionality pretty much intact while offline.
Step 1: Google map the route. Obviously, you want a more detailed destination addy than mere "Oakland CA", but the purpose of this demo, it'll do.
Step 2: Click on "link to this page" at the right upper corner.
Step 3: Determine levels of zoom to be used for the trip. This is important step, because it will prevent your broswer possibly crashing offline.
Step 4: Trace the entire route, with the various levels of zoom. This part is the most tedious and the most important step, as it will cache the necessary image tiles for the route into your broswer's temporary cache. For the places planned for stop overs, I zoomed in several levels more going in to nearly street levels, and for the last 10 miles or so, I did trace zoomed in all the way (you might even want to click on the satellite view button for the last zoomed in portion of your destination).
Now it's VERY important to note that you cannot touch the back button on the browser while all this tracing and zooming. It will default back to the front page of the google maps if you do that and you'll have to repeat this.
Step 5: After done tracing the route with various levels of zoom, click on File > Work Offline.
Step 6: Then click on File > Save As... > type: Web Archive, single file (*.mht).
Step 7: We're done! Now you can just click on that .mht file on your laptop's hard drive and use the google map offline as you would online (remember to click the browser into offline mode to get the map working!). The only caviat is that A) you won't see images for the parts of the map that you did not trace in that zoomed level, and B) if you zoom from one extreme to another too quickly, you will crash yor browser. So I recommend that you zoom in on little steps. And don't forget to remember the levels of zoom you traced the route in!
Other notes:
Yes, I did this with the dirty dirty MS IE6. Someone might want to try this with Firefox and other browsers.
Yes, this is useless if you don't plan to have a laptop on your trip. And I don't recommend refering to the map if you don't have another person in the car as a nevigator. Drive safe people for Pete's sake!
So in couple of weeks, I'll be flying to Cincinnasty OH so I can help my little sister move her dog (which the vet deemed not flyable due to some wacky medical condition) across country to their new home in suburbs of Oakland CA via a car trip. For that, I was preparing a triptic with the Google maps. I was just gonna cap JPEGs of the various parts of the map to save on my brand new Tablet PC, and have one of us use them to help the driver nevigate.
So I googled the trip from Cincy to Oakland. And was just zooming in and out various parts of the trip to plan things out. As I was copying and pasting parts of that route, it nagged on me how cruel it was to be able to zoom into any part of the route while connected to the internet, but we'd have to look at static and crappy JPEGS while on the road. Then I asked myself, why couldn't I just cache the google maps route on the TPC as a file? Is it even possible with the zooming functionality intact? I aimed to find out. After an hour or two of dicking around, I think I found out the method to bring that functionality pretty much intact while offline.
Step 1: Google map the route. Obviously, you want a more detailed destination addy than mere "Oakland CA", but the purpose of this demo, it'll do.
Step 2: Click on "link to this page" at the right upper corner.
Step 3: Determine levels of zoom to be used for the trip. This is important step, because it will prevent your broswer possibly crashing offline.
Step 4: Trace the entire route, with the various levels of zoom. This part is the most tedious and the most important step, as it will cache the necessary image tiles for the route into your broswer's temporary cache. For the places planned for stop overs, I zoomed in several levels more going in to nearly street levels, and for the last 10 miles or so, I did trace zoomed in all the way (you might even want to click on the satellite view button for the last zoomed in portion of your destination).
Now it's VERY important to note that you cannot touch the back button on the browser while all this tracing and zooming. It will default back to the front page of the google maps if you do that and you'll have to repeat this.
Step 5: After done tracing the route with various levels of zoom, click on File > Work Offline.
Step 6: Then click on File > Save As... > type: Web Archive, single file (*.mht).
Step 7: We're done! Now you can just click on that .mht file on your laptop's hard drive and use the google map offline as you would online (remember to click the browser into offline mode to get the map working!). The only caviat is that A) you won't see images for the parts of the map that you did not trace in that zoomed level, and B) if you zoom from one extreme to another too quickly, you will crash yor browser. So I recommend that you zoom in on little steps. And don't forget to remember the levels of zoom you traced the route in!
Other notes:
Yes, I did this with the dirty dirty MS IE6. Someone might want to try this with Firefox and other browsers.
Yes, this is useless if you don't plan to have a laptop on your trip. And I don't recommend refering to the map if you don't have another person in the car as a nevigator. Drive safe people for Pete's sake!
