Overview

KML (Keyhole Markup Language), an XML schema originally developed for Google Earth to describe shapes on a map has been supported by VE since version 6.0 was released and has remain unchanged up to VE 6.2.  The common questions this series will address are "Which KML features does VE support?" and "How do I use these features?" for developers with no KML experience.

KML Quickstart

If you haven't already, take a look at the Interactive SDK (http://dev.live.com/virtualearth/sdk/ ) and MSDN (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb429606.aspx ) on to see how to load a feed into VE. I had trouble loading KML locally (GeoRSS was okay) using any browser even with a website setup through IIS.  I found that uploading my KML file to SkyDrive and referencing the URL worked.  Finally, you'll need to open the google KML documentation page (http://code.google.com/apis/kml/documentation/kmlreference.html) to follow along.

Here is a sample KML loader taken from the SDK with a few modifications:

Welcome back to the third part of our deep dive in the Windows Live Quick Apps Website featuring the Contoso Bicycle Club. In this part we’ll take apart one of the main JavaScript function calls that this web site uses, updatePage.

This is the main routine in the application and the one that controls the content for the main area of screen.

Welcome back to the second part of our deep dive in the Windows Live Quick Apps Website featuring the Contoso Bicycle Club. In this part we’ll take a look at another custom user control found on the home page, the Latest Rides feed.

This control is like the previous control we took apart in the first part of the deep dive, but with some changes to that manifest themselves into what looks like a completely different control.

The Contoso Bicycle Club is a demonstration website put together to show off a number of Windows Live technologies and how easy it is to integrate these technologies into your own websites. The source code for both this web site and a second web site entitled Contoso University are available for download from CodePlex.

One note before we proceed any further. Both of these websites are written to run with Visual Studio Orcas (Beta 2 and above). Both applications also use Asp.Net Ajax and the Contoso Bicycle Club also requires the Asp.Net Ajax Toolkit. Both Asp.Net Ajax, the Toolkit and also Asp.Net Ajax Futures are freely downloadable from here.

In this deep dive series, we will take apart the web application and explain in detail exactly how it was put together.