The next release of our map design and data visualization tool, Mapbox Studio, will do away with code-based styling and introduce a totally visual interface. Here’s a video showing off some of the basic styling tools:
Finding the right balance between ease of use and power has been one of the main design challenges we’ve faced while developing the tool. Beginners should to able to pick it up and visualize their data right away, but the tool also needs to be powerful and flexible enough for seasoned cartographers and designers. One of the ways we’ve achieved this balance is by providing many ways to select and style the map.
If you look closely at the video, you’ll see a few different interactions. You can click on the map to select layers:
Sometimes you need to apply changes to more than one layer at the same time, so we made it easy to multi-select and then apply styles across multiple layers:
Style any property with a ramp based on zoom level:
We didn’t show this off in the video, but we’ve developed more advanced styling views for managing complex visual systems in your map styles:
There’s more to the new Mapbox Studio than map styling. Stay tuned for more updates as we get closer to the release date and ask me anything on twitter @samanbb