Microsoft releases Bing Maps V8 Web Control

Bing Maps team announced the preview release of the Bing Maps V8 web control few months back at Build developer conference. Today, they announced that Bing Maps V8 control is stable and ready for production. The new V8 control allows developers to implement features such as Autosuggest, Streetside imagery and many business intelligence tools using few lines of code. Also, the new V8 control is using the HTML5 canvas for significantly faster performance.

Microsoft is also planning to add following new features soon,

• New Map Styles – A Greyscale and Dark map styles, which are better suited for data visualization in business intelligence type scenarios.
• Spatial Geometry Math – Calculate intersections and union shapes. Generate convex and concave hulls, Voronoi diagrams and much more.
• TypeScript definitions – TypeScript is an excellent programming language when developing large scale web apps. In fact, we used TypeScript to develop Bing Maps V8. We will be making the TypeScript definitions available so you can easily use Bing Maps V8 in your TypeScript app.
• Data Binning Layer – Data binning, also known as hex binning, is a common type of data visualization that is used in charts. However, when used with maps, it provides an engaging visualization that combines the power of heat maps and clustering.
• Image filters – In addition to having two new map styles you can also apply image filters against the base maps as well to customize the map to look the way you want.
• Export Map as an Image – Being able to visualize your data on a map is great, but this feature makes it easy to share an image of that map with others. Add it to a report, email it, or put it in a presentation.

Check out the Interactive SDK and MSDN Documentation for more details.