1. GXM Basics

GeoExt mobile (GXM) is a young JavaScript framework providing classes to build mobile web-applications with a geoegraphic component, that have the look and feel of native apps and work across a variety of operating systems and devices.

GXM is the sister library to GeoExt . While GeoExt offers a “Toolkit for Rich Web Mapping Applications” these applications will not provide full functionality when accessed with mobile devices. With the ever-growing use of smartphones such as the iPhone, iPad or Android based devices to access internet resources, a rich toolkit for mapping applications directly targeted at these devices was missing.

GeoExt Mobile – or GXM – wants to fill this gap by combining the powers of two extraordinary JavaScript libraries:

Sencha Touch (“the First HTML5 Mobile Web App Framework”)

can be used to build web application that look and feel native on lots of devices. It is in many ways the mobile counterpart of Ext JS.

OpenLayers (“Free Maps for the Web”)

is well known for its feature richness for displaying and interacting with geographic data in the web. Since the version 2.11 OpenLayers supports mobile devices due to the fact that it e.g. respects touch-based events.

GXM wants to combine the powers of its base libraries and wants to provide usefull widgets and components that can be the foundation of your mobile-aware webgis applications.

This module introduces fundamental GeoExt concepts for creating a map. You will create a map, dissect your map to understand the parts, and get links to additional learning resources.

• 1.1. Create a map,
• 1.2. Dissect your map,
• 1.3. Find documentation and additional learning resources.