MAPPOINT Q & A

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413 Ralph Joiner - September 26, 2001

Is there a simple way to access MapPoint 2002 within a browser so that a user-entered GPS point is passed to MapPoint, and the browser displays a MapPoint map with that point centered in the map.

Answer:

If you are looking for the exact thing you are asking (i.e. can you run MapPoint inside a browser and pass it lat/lon values in that environment), the answer is yes assuming you run Internet Explorer 4.x or higher. Simply right-click any MapPoint PTM file, choose "Open With", and select Internet Explorer. Or you can type the path and file name of a MapPoint file on the Address line of your browser. This will open MapPoint with all its menus and features inside of IE.

But reading between the lines, your question is probably about running MapPoint on a web server, providing a browser interface on the client side to send requests to MapPoint, generating maps on the server, and sending these back to the client. This is technically possible, although not recommended and supported by Microsoft. There are also severe licensing restrictions on "online" use of MapPoint. Each license of MapPoint can only serve 1,000 maps, and maps cannot be sold.

To all intents and purposes, this means a server-based MapPoint solution is only viable if you have a limited number of client stations so you can give each of them a license of MapPoint. That removes the above restrictions and allows you to use MapPoint on the client to render the maps.

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