I just threw together a zoomable view of xkcd’s latest comic using the Google Maps API and US$0.27 of Google App Engine quota: Click and Drag. It helps to find some of the more off-the-beaten-track easter eggs, view it here!
If I get enough (i.e., any) interest, I will clean up the source code and make it available.
isten
/ September 20, 2012Very neat! It needs a bit more outzooming capability, but otherwise great 🙂
Robert
/ September 20, 2012Thanks for the kind comment! Because I’m lazy, your computer is doing the downloading of tiles straight from xkcd, and shrinking them down to fit on the screen. At the most zoomed out view, each little 256×256 requires a download and scale of a 2048×2048 image! This is pretty on your computer, and xkcd’s servers as well.
The best solution would be to generate reduced tiles and host them somewhere, but this would take more time than I was willing to commit 😛
casty
/ September 20, 2012That’s great! Thanks!
Oliver
/ May 25, 2013Fantastic!