In order to add more features to the Google Maps JavaScript API without increasing its size Google is adding a new concept to the API: libraries. “A library is a set of Maps API features that are only loaded when explicitly requested by the application,” Maps API Product Manager Thor Mitchell wrote on the Google Code Blog today. By uses libraries, applications that need the features found in the libraries can use them without slowing down other applications that don’t.
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The first library added will be the geometry library, a collection of functions for “performing distance, heading, and area calculations in a spherical geometry, such as on the surface of the Earth.”
Libraries seem like an elegant way to add more power to an API without slowing it down. Is this technique applied to other APIs?
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