At times, golfing can be one most relaxing past times in the world, however at other times, it can also be more stress then necessary. Why complicate matters by getting lost on the way to the course. Sure, you can look up the address before you leave for the course, but locating new and potentially, unventured places isn't always that easy to do. That's where that ten dollar phrase... "A picture is worth a thousand words" takes effect.

Knowing where you are geographically, is essential for day to day living. That's why, it is becoming increasingly popular for golf related websites to include Interactive mapping information on them. Two excellent golf-related resources that are integrating web-mapping applications into their websites are BCGolfGuide.com and GolfMap.com.

GolfMap.com is a unique collection of golf related information for various cities within Canada and in the United States, complete with web-based mapping information. Where some sites will show a static JPG or GIF image of the golf course location, GolfMap.com went all the way with their application. They developed a comprehensive Autodesk MapGuide mapping application, that let's you select virtually any region that you wish to locate golf related information.

By clicking a few buttons and selecting a few links, you can easily generate a neat and orderly, printable web-based map, complete with a legend, scalebar and north arrow. Once the specific golf course that you have chosen is shown in the MapGuide interface, clicking on the course will either output an online report of the golf course information, or the application points to a specific HTML document with this same golf information. Depending on the which golf application you select, it might be slightly different.

Prior to viewing any of the maps in GolfMap.com, you must first download the MapGuide Viewer plugin from the Autodesk website. The MapGuide Viewer is the component of Autodesk MapGuide software that you require, in order to access and interact with the GolfMap.com maps through your web browser. Download Autodesk MapGuide Viewer and try it out...it's free, easy to install and it's less than 2 MB in size.

See their web-mapping application.




BCGolfguide.com

BCGolfGuide.com, unlike GolfMap.com, took a slightly different approach when it came to implementing a web-mapping application. It's important to note that you don't necessarily have to spend large amounts of money to achieve a viable application. Instead of adding all of the "bells and whistles" with a commercially developed application, BCGolfGuide generated a PDF file of a map for region covering the lower mainland in British Columbia. In order to view the map, a PDF Viewer must be installed on the PC, which can easily be downloaded from their website. With the viewer installed, all that is left is to download the PDF file of the golf map. Once downloaded, you can zoom in, zoom out, and pan around on the map, almost performing every function that any commercial application provides.

Typically, a PDF file is a "static" image, in that there is no intelligence associated to the image. BCGolfGuide developed the map, so that when you scroll over a desired golf course (indicated by large red dots), it's selectable. Selecting the golf course that you desire, generates an on-line report for all of the relavent information associated to that golf course (i.e. course listings, course reviews, cost etc...). BCGolfGuide implemented their website with Allaire's ColdFusion, which is a web-enabled software that allows you to generate database driven, on-line reports on the web. Since ColdFusion is used, the map essentially performs like a commercially developed web-mapping application, but at a fraction of the cost.

See their web-mapping application.