If you were not able to join Clemens in Amsterdam for the Microsoft Maps Roadshow, we would like to share some of the highlights of this well attended event and where you can go to look for more great information on the topics covered.
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Tile layers are a great way to visualize a lot of data on a map and still have good performance. Depending on the type of data you are displaying as a tile layer, you may find that it is localized to a small part of the world. If this is the case then you will want to limit the loading of tiles in your app to that area. 
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Bing Maps is the most widely used map control inside of Windows Store apps. Many simple apps consist of a single page user experience while many other consist of multiple pages. Many developers like to use Bing Maps throughout their application, but have found that this results in the map control constantly being loaded/disposed as the user navigates between pages. This doesn’t make for the best user experience, as there is a slight delay due to...
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More and more developers want to add auto complete to their map applications, and for good reason. It’s convenient for users and can help make your map application a user-friendly delight. In this blog post I will show you how to use Bing Spatial Data Services to create custom auto complete functionality in your next app. Some developers have turned to using the Bing Maps geocoding services to do this, but this often ends up generating a large...
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In a recent blog post, you saw how to use JavaScript and CSS3 to create custom animations. Now you’ll see how to create the same custom animations for a Windows Store app using .NET.  You are in luck, as all of these animations can be used with the Bing Maps WPF control as well with just a few tweaks. You can find the complete source code for this blog post in the MSDN code sample here. Setting up the base project To get started, open Visual...
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Do you find that you spend more time digging through documentation trying to figure out what properties do rather than spending time building great apps? IntelliSense can help. A few weeks ago, someone asked me if there was any IntelliSense support for Bing Maps. I vaguely remembered there being an open source project that added IntelliSense for Bing Maps AJAX v6.3 in Visual Studio. With a quick search on Bing I found the project on CodePlex and...
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Most enterprise data have a location component, and data related to customer support interactions are no exception. When interacting with a customer, knowing where they are physically located can enable us to provide them with location-specific insight and information. Further, by visualizing larger groupings of customers, interactions, or social media events on a map, we can identify trends by location, and use these location-based trends to...
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Bing Maps is a very powerful mapping platform that is often used for creating engaging user experiences. The fluid interactive maps make for a great canvas when visualizing location based data. In this blog post we are going to take a look at how to make the user experience a little more engaging by adding custom animations that can be used in both web and Windows Store apps. Full source code for this blog post can be found in the MSDN Code...
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From time to time I come across developers who want to have an auto suggest search box to use with their map. Your first thought might be to simply use the Bing Maps geocoding services to do this, however this often ends up generating a large number of transactions.The Bing Maps V8 Web control now has Autosuggest built right in and is included with the control itself, avoiding extra transactions you might get from other service options.
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The native Bing Maps Windows Store control has two types of shapes: polygons and polylines. These shapes are great for representing areas and paths on the map. Often it is useful to be able to associate some information or metadata with these shapes. In past versions of Bing Maps we could easily store this information in the Tag property of the shape. This makes it easy to retrieve this data when a shape is clicked or tapped. Unfortunately,the...
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