
Escape from Mercator Maps - jcolman
https://mapzen.com/blog/escape-from-mercator
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napsterbr
Did not know about Tangram, seems awesome!

I have a (dumb) question. Why do you use Leaflet? Isn't Tangram the same as
Leaflet, or am I missing something here?

A fully WebGL mapping solution is better for performance, but won't using
Leaflet HTML5 Canvas defeat this purpose?

It seems to me that, because of this, Mapbox GL will have a better performance
than Tangram.

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bcamper
Tangram is currently exposed as a Leaflet plugin, but manages its own WebGL
Canvas element (which is inserted into Leaflet's DOM hierarchy) and handles
all rendering on its own. Leaflet is essentially just serving as the UI/input
layer here (map position and viewport info is forwarded to Tangram), and can
also be a convenient way to add SVG paths or markers on top, or raster tile
layers underneath. It hasn't shown any noticeable performance impact in
benchmarks though (this is the same arrangement Mapbox GL uses for its own
Leaflet plugin). In the future we'll also expose the Tangram API more directly
for use outside of Leaflet though, this was just the quickest way to let
people use it via a library they might already be familiar with.

~~~
napsterbr
Got it, thanks for the explanation!

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CapitalistCartr
This is how maps should work. They all seem entirely responsive on my 18 month
old mobile.

