Don’t call me DOM

As a follow-up on my geographical site map generator, I’ve coded up a very simple system that allows to navigate on a Google Map by area; although Google Maps are really pretty fun to use, I find that getting an overview of a well-defined area (country, continent, etc) takes quite too much effort by default.

So, after having looked up data for the areas the most relevant to my map, I wrote a simple area-selector as follows:

// This relies on the fact that the HTML selector widget is the first one in the document
// should probably use a name instead
// Also, this assumes the map variable has been set to the relevant GMap object
function centerOn() {
   placeSelect = document.forms[0].place;
   place = placeSelect.options[placeSelect.selectedIndex].value;
   switch(place) {
      case "USA": 
        map.centerAndZoom(new GPoint(-95.677068,37.0625),13);
        break;
      case "NewEngland":
        map.centerAndZoom(new GPoint(-73.399658,42.867912),10);
        break;
      case "Europe":
        map.centerAndZoom(new GPoint(11.513672,49.439557),13);
        break;
      case "France":
        map.centerAndZoom(new GPoint(2.8125,46.860191),11);
        break;
      case "PACA":
        map.centerAndZoom(new GPoint(5.125122,43.858297),9);
        break;
      case "World":
        map.centerAndZoom(new GPoint(-1.054687,31.353637),15);
        break;
      case "Brazil":
        map.centerAndZoom(new GPoint(-47.460937,-12.897489),13);
        break;
   }
   placeSelect.selectedIndex = 0;
   return false;
}

This is plugged in the HTML code with a drop down menu:

<form><p>Center and Zoom on: <select name='place' id='place' onchange='centerOn()'>
<option selected='selected' disabled='disabled'>Pick an area</option>
<option value='World'>World</option>
<option value='Europe'>Europe</option>
<option value='France'>France</option>
<option value='PACA'>South of France</option>
<option  value='USA'>USA</option>
<option  value='NewEngland'>New England</option>
<option  value='Brazil'>Brazil</option>
</select></p></form>

(implemented on my personal Web site)

It would be nice if there was some place (typically a Wiki) where the community could maintain a list of various distinctive areas that one could pick relevant values from; I guess the data should store a more standard scale than the zoom level used in Google Maps in such a case.