Link to the Current Map View

Stamen Design has released a nice checklist for creating interactive digital maps. The checklist provides an interesting guide to things you might want to consider when designing your own maps.

Stamen's first checkpoint says that, "URLs should contain and maintain state, by default." In other words as users interact with the map the URL should dynamically update to provide a deep-link to the current map view.

This is one of those features which I always mean to add to my own maps and never quite remember to implement. A dynamic URL aids usability, enables users to bookmark the current map view and can encourage your users to share links to your map with their friends.

Stamen provide a link to leaflet-hash on Github, which will enable you to easily add this feature to a Leaflet.js map.

If you are developing maps using the Google Maps API then you might want to check out geocodezip's Link to This map. This map doesn't actually update the URL on the fly but does provide a handy link to the current map view.