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Google Earth API

Google Earth API Release Notes

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June 30, 2009

Google Earth API Update

  • Internet Explorer 8 is now officially supported.

June 23, 2009

Google Earth Plug-in, version 5.0.11738.1858 (Windows, Mac)

  • (Issue 188) Fixed event handler and google.earth.fetchKml related bugs in Internet Explorer 8.
  • Fixed balloon related bugs in Internet Explorer 8.

Note: Internet Explorer 8 support will be reenabled in the next few days. Developers can test their Earth API sites for IE8 compatibility by appending #geplugin_browserok to the URL.

Google Earth API Update

  • Improved internal HTML DOM structure for better DOCTYPE support, resulting in layout improvements in Internet Explorer 6.

May 27, 2009

Google Earth Plug-in, version 5.0.11737.2027 (Windows, Mac)

  • Fixed a bug where mouse event handling temporarily broke if the camera was programmatically changed during user interaction (such as panning).
  • Balloon positions are now more properly updated during camera movement.
  • OpenGL performance has been improved.
  • 3D building performance has been improved.
  • (KML Issue 242) LOD calculation is now correct for non-square regions.
  • (Issue 119) GEPlugin.parseKml now supports Unicode strings.

March 31, 2009

Google Earth Plug-in, version 5.0.11655.6079 (Windows, Mac)

  • The ocean surface and underwater terrain are now visible.
  • (Issue 7) KML containing time primitives (<TimeStamp> and <TimeSpan>) content will now invoke the time slider UI upon being loaded into the plugin.
  • (Issue 75) GEPlugin.parseKml now accepts arbitrarily long KML strings.
  • (Issue 99) Sunlight and nighttime now appear at their real-time positions when turned on using the GESun interface.
  • (Issue 118) 16-bit PNG images are now rendered properly on both Windows and Mac.
  • (Issue 148) GEView.copyAsLookAt now returns the expected heading value in all cases.

Google Earth API, version 1.002

  • (Issue 43) Added GEPhotoOverlayViewer and KmlPhotoOverlay for programmatically entering and exiting photo overlays.
  • (Issue 180) Added GETourPlayer and KmlTour for programmatic tour playback.
  • (Issue 47) Added LAYER_BUILDINGS_LOW_RESOLUTION for enabling or disabling the gray buildings layer.
  • (Issue 42) Added GEView.getViewportGlobeBounds for querying the current viewport's bounding box.
  • (Issue 10) Added viewchangebegin, viewchange, and viewchangeend events to the GEView interface.
  • (Issue 49) Added GEView.hitTest for querying information about a given screen point inside the plugin viewport.
  • (Issue 27) Added GEPlugin.getStreamingPercent for querying the terrain and imagery streaming progress.
  • (Issue 181) The Google Earth API can now connect to the Mars database (http://khmdb.google.com/?db=mars) via the database parameter in google.earth.createInstance.
  • (Issue 74) The Google Earth API can now connect to Google Earth Server instances via the database parameter in google.earth.createInstance. Contact Google Earth Enterprise support for more details.
  • Added the ALTITUDE_RELATIVE_TO_SEA_FLOOR and ALTITUDE_CLAMP_TO_SEA_FLOOR altitude modes.

Google Earth API Update

  • Support for Internet Explorer 8 was temporarily disabled due to an issue with google.earth.fetchKml in that browser. We are working to enable full support for Internet Explorer 8 as soon as possible.

    • February 19, 2009

    Google Earth API Update

    • Google Chrome 1.0+ is now officially supported.

      Note: There is a Chromium issue that causes Chrome to temporarily hang when alert/prompt dialogs are opened in an API callback or event handler routine. The workaround is to wrap all calls to alert or prompt in a setTimeout, as is demonstrated in the Fetch Bad KML sample.

    January 16, 2009

    Google Earth API Update

    • A fix for (Issue 141) was reverted due to various browser compatibility issues. The bug is currently open and a workaround has been posted in the comments.

    December 19, 2008

    Google Earth Plug-in, version 4.3.11528.8566 (Windows, Mac)

    • The Google Earth Plug-in for Mac installation package is now ~38% smaller in size (29.1 MB).
    • The Google Earth Plug-in for Mac Uninstaller is now bundled with the installation package.
    • Added a note about the use of Google Software Update in the Google Earth Plug-in for Mac installation package.
    • Fixed a crash related to 3D buildings.
    • (Issue 113) Fixed a bug that caused placemark labels to rotate with icons when the icons had a heading.
    • (Issue 107) Fixed a bug that caused placemarks to be unclickable if their icon had a non-centered hotSpot.
    • (Issue 109) Fixed a bug that caused frameend events to be fired persistently on Mac.
    • (Issue 114) Fixed a bug that caused higher than normal system resource utilization.

    December 4, 2008

    Google Earth Plug-in Installation Update (Mac)

    December 3, 2008

    Google Earth Plug-in, version 4.3.11498.3261 (Windows, Mac)

    • Launch of the Google Earth Browser Plug-in for Mac OS X
    • Startup time on Windows has been improved.
    • KML/KMZ parsing and rendering speed has been improved.
    • XML Namespaces are now supported during KML parsing.
    • (Issue 66) Polygons and line strings are now interactive and mouse events on these geometries can now be listened to using google.earth.addEventListener.
    • (Issue 76) Fixed a bug that caused a 'Could not create folder' error message upon plugin instantiation if there were spaces in the logged in user's username.
    • (Issue 59) Fixed a bug that caused placemarks in interval-refresh Network Links to be duplicated upon user interaction.

    November 13, 2008

    Google Earth Plug-in, version 4.3.9685.8774 (Windows)

    • Fixed a bug that caused sky mode imagery to disappear.

    November 4, 2008

    Google Earth API Update

    • In Internet Explorer, there is no longer a 'Line: 128, Unspecified error' message upon browser close with Script Debugging turned on.

    October 17, 2008

    Google Earth API Update

    • Earth plugin instances no longer crash when the container DOM node or its ancestors are hidden.
    • The 'Loading' spinner animation now uses cleaner CSS, preventing conflicts with page stylesheets.

    Previous Releases

    Google Earth Plug-in, version 4.3.9684.6498 (Windows)

    • In Internet Explorer, the Google Earth Plug-in no longer crashes the browser upon page refresh or browser close.

    Google Earth Plug-in, version 4.3.9679.1761 (Windows)

    • The Google Earth Plug-in now uses NPAPI on Firefox instead of XPCom.
    • Browser restart is no longer required after installing the plugin.
    • The 'Loading...' message has been replaced in favor of a vertically and horizontally centered animated 'loading' icon.

    Google Earth Plug-in, version 4.3.9597.9390 (Windows)

    This document describes the additions and changes in version 4.3.9597.9390 of the Google Earth Plug-in and API:

    • Under VMWare, when using DirectX, Google Earth Plug-in now loads and CPU utilization is improved.
    • Firefox, version 3.1 alpha is now supported.
    • Maps API integration with the Google Earth API was not working with Internet Explorer, version 6. It now works in all supported browsers.
    • LinearRing coordinate count is reported correctly.
    • Google Earth Plug-in works with Windows 2000 operating system.
    • When you CTRL-Left click on a polygon, the pop-up menu no longer appears.
    • The Maps API example's placemark balloon stays open when you click on it.
    • Mouse-up and Click events are correctly triggered when over the plug-in window.
    • Mouse events now occur during fly-to.
    • The Google Earth Plug-in error page displays properly in Internet Explorer, version 6.x.
    • The Google Earth Plug-in no longer closes and opens a new process when refreshed if video drivers are not loaded.
    • The Google Earth Plug-in uses OpenGL mode when DirectX initialization fails.