The 'MappingWidgets' project is developing a framework for making simple clients to OpenGIS web mapping servers (WMS). For this purpose, the PHP Smarty template framework is extended with plugins.

Standard web mapping / geography functionality is: zoom in, zoom out, pan, info, overview, etc.

A second objective is to create a Drupal module which uses the mappingwidgets library. This will make the web mapping client available in a CMS environment. This module can be found as Carto module at the Drupal site.

The following demo pages are available:

	simplemap and button widgets using the Demis opengis web mapping server (see its capabilities); a map will only be shown if the service is available online.
	using a UMN MapServer at this site as an opengis web mapping server; both map and legend widgets can be demonstrated.

Characteristics of the framework:

• php classes are 'mirrored' by javascript objects; each widget instance corresponds with one javascript object at the client
• php widget code and javascript code are in separate files
• the resulting (x)html code is multilanguage; when compiling the templates the #CODES# are properly translated
• the html code does not necessarily fill a complete page; it is possible to assign it to an element of the page (e.g. the content of a node in a drupal page)
• the pages are cached
• when needed (e.g. with the ServerMap widget, which uses the PHP Mapscript extension), the widgets communicate with the server using xmlhttp requests