An Annotated Video Guide on Mapbox

Photo source: https://gfycat.com/gifs/search/mapbox

Introduction

Whether you are a student or instructor interested in using Mapbox, this guide offers a quick overview of videos related to the software’s how-to’s and provides a few examples of how others have used Mapbox in their projects or businesses.

This annotated video guide informs viewers of 8 identifiers:

1. Creator of video
2. Title of video
3. Date published
4. Length of video
5. Category (ex. arcgis pro, google maps, qgis, mobile app, business)
6. Audio (yes or no)
7. Captions Available (yes or no)
8. Summary of video

Tutorials

ArcGIS Pro

• Length: 5 minutes 41 seconds
• Category: ArcGIS Pro
• Audio: YES
• Captions Available: YES – English (Auto-generated)
• Summary: Chris Goranson teaches users how to use Mapbox’s custom map styles in ArcGIS Pro from the website: https://www.mapbox.com/designer-maps. Using the share button in Mapbox, users can find an integration url code that can added through the web mapping server connection tool in ArcGIS Pro.

Google Maps

• Length: 1 minute 27 seconds
• Category: Google Maps
• Audio: YES
• Captions Available: YES – English (auto-generated)
• Summary: The video explains how to export a google map as a KML file and then import the data into http://studio.mapbox.com. The instructions go by quickly but the steps are verbalized clearly, and the video can be replayed to catch any steps that went by too fast.

GeoJSON

• Length: 9 minutes 25 seconds
• Category: GeoJSON
• Audio: YES
• Captions Available: YES – English (auto-generated)
• Summary: Rob Labs discusses how to import a dataset into Mapbox Studio. Editing the dataset, adding points from the map, exporting, creating map styles, changing symbology and the importance of setting its properties and using codepen.io to see a live sample of the map are discussed. Labs provides a step by step instruction guide for the video at https://roblabs.com/mapbox/2016/12/13/Adding-GeoJSON-to-Mapbox-Styles/ and other content at: http://roblabs.com/blog.

React

• Length: 23 minutes 31 seconds
• Category: React; JSON; JavaScript
• Audio: YES
• Captions Available: YES
• Summary: Leigh Halliday teaches how to import map data using javascript language. Halliday walks through the steps to add/find latitude and longitude data, set width and height and code for the zoom function. Additionally, changing the base layer and popup markers are discussed.

QGIS

• Length: 3 minutes 16 seconds
• Category: QGIS
• Audio: No voice but has instrumental playing in the background
• Captions Available: Text instructions on screen
• Summary: This video provides instructions on how to obtain a share link for a map style in Mapbox to be used in QGIS. Once QGIS is open, the video creator provides step by step instructions to embedding the code and adding the layer and additional GIS data. This video may be helpful if the teacher prefers to narrate while the video plays or for students to view on their own time.

Project Examples

Mobile Apps

• Length: 1 minute 24 seconds
• Category: Mobile App; Business
• Audio: YES
• Captions Available: YES – English (auto-generated)
• Summary: Andy Acs and Konrad Waliszewski, TripScout’s founders, discuss how the mobile app uses Mapbox to create offline apps for travelers to search for local sites and have a personalized travel experience.

• Length: 1 minute 46 seconds
• Category: Mobile App; Business
• Audio: YES
• Captions Available: YES – English (auto-generated)
• Summary: The founder of Woov, Sebastien Westerduin, gives a brief discussion of how the mobile app uses Mapbox to create custom maps to help festival goers locate people, food and music venues easier.

About the Author

Kyeesha M. Wilcox (wilcox49@msu.edu) is a second year master’s student in the Department of Geography, Environment and Spatial Sciences at Michigan State University.