glossary.json

{
  "access token": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-access-token",
    "title": "access token",
    "summary": "To use any of Mapbox's tools, APIs, or SDKs, you'll need a Mapbox access token. Mapbox uses access tokens to associate requests to API resources with your account. You can find all your access tokens, create new ones, or delete existing ones on your API Access Tokens page."
  },
  "Android SDK": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-android-sdk",
    "title": "Android SDK",
    "summary": "The Mapbox Android SDK is an open source toolset for building mapping applications for Android devices with great flexibility for visual styling and customizability."
  },
  "baselayer": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-baselayer",
    "title": "baselayer",
    "summary": "A baselayer often refers to the map style that you designed in Mapbox Studio Classic or the Mapbox classic styles. The baselayer provides geographic context and serves as a starting point for your map."
  },
  "bounding box": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-bounding-box",
    "title": "bounding box",
    "summary": "A bounding box is a mechanism for describing a particular area of a map. It is typically expressed as an array of coordinate pairs, with the first coordinate pair referring to the southwestern corner of the box and the second referring to the northeastern corner of the box."
  },
  "CartoCSS": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-cartocss",
    "title": "CartoCSS",
    "summary": "CartoCSS is a language used by Mapbox Studio Classic to build classic styles. You can use CartoCSS to choose colors, apply different rendering at specific zoom levels, and generally apply styles to your vector data."
  },
  "classic style": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-classic-style",
    "title": "classic style",
    "summary": "In Mapbox Studio Classic, style projects contain stylesheets, basic thin metadata (name, description, attribution, etc.), and a reference to a source."
  },
  "CSV": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-csv",
    "title": "CSV",
    "summary": "The CSV (comma-separated values) format is common for table data, like the kind you may use in Excel or other spreadsheets. CSV files aren't necessarily mappable unless they contain geographic information (like latitude and longitude)."
  },
  "GeoJSON": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-geojson",
    "title": "GeoJSON",
    "summary": "GeoJSON is a file format for map data served by Mapbox\nweb services and APIs. As a subset of the JSON\nformat, it can be parsed in modern software and native to the JavaScript language."
  },
  "GPX": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-gpx",
    "title": "GPX",
    "summary": "GPX, or GPS eXchange format, is a data format commonly created from GPS receivers."
  },
  "iframe": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-iframe",
    "title": "iframe",
    "summary": "Mapbox Editor generates an embed code for you to add your maps to your website or blog. The embed code uses an <iframe> to display your map. This HTML element allows you to put a webpage into another webpage, insulating all the code that makes your map work from the code on your website."
  },
  "iOS SDK": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-ios-sdk",
    "title": "iOS SDK",
    "summary": "The Mapbox iOS SDK is an open source toolset for building mapping applications for iPhone and iPad devices with great flexibility for visual styling and customizability."
  },
  "KML": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-kml",
    "title": "KML",
    "summary": "KML is a file format that's like GeoJSON, but used more commonly in Google products. Like GeoJSON, it can store points, lines, polygons, and other vector data. Unlike GeoJSON, it's based on XML, rather than JSON."
  },
  "Landsat Live": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-landsat-live",
    "title": "Landsat Live",
    "summary": "Landsat Live has the latest imagery, everywhere in the world. Each pixel is captured within the past 32 days and rendered directly into our layers."
  },
  "latitude and longitude": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-lat-lon",
    "title": "latitude and longitude",
    "summary": "Latitude and longitude are a pair of numbers (coordinates) used to describe a position on the plane of a geographic coordinate system. The numbers are in decimal degrees format and range from -90 to 90 for latitude and -180 to 180 for longitude."
  },
  "layer": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-layer",
    "title": "layer",
    "summary": "Layers are used in GL styles to add styling rules to specific subsets of data. (For example, if you wanted all the rivers in your map to be pink, you would create a layer in your style for it.) Layers contain both a reference to the data for which they're defining a style as well as the styling rules to be applied."
  },
  "Leaflet": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-leaflet",
    "title": "Leaflet",
    "summary": "Leaflet is an open source web mapping library that forms the basis of Mapbox.js. It's software that works on web pages and makes interactive maps possible. Leaflet requests tiles from servers like Mapbox, displays and animates them, and supports other overlays."
  },
  "map ID": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-map-id",
    "title": "map ID",
    "summary": "Any time you create a project with Mapbox Editor, upload a style with Mapbox Studio Classic, or upload data to your account on Mapbox.com, it will receive a map ID. The map ID allows you to reference that specific project, style, or data with a Mapbox API or SDK. This means you can create a custom map style in Mapbox Studio Classic and then use that map with your Mapbox.js project or upload a dataset and add it as a custom source in Mapbox Studio Classic."
  },
  "map view": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-map-view",
    "title": "map view",
    "summary": "Web maps consist of many individual tiles. As users interact with maps by panning or zooming, more tiles are loaded. We measure a single map view as 4 raster tiles when the map is using Mapbox Studio styles or 15 raster tiles when the map is using raster tilesets, Mapbox Editor Classic projects, or Mapbox Studio Classic styles. This is typical for a single page view on most websites. More than one map view can be generated during a single session as your users explore and interact with the map."
  },
  "Mapbox Editor": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-mapbox-editor",
    "title": "Mapbox Editor",
    "summary": "Mapbox Editor is our online interface where you can choose a Mapbox classic style as a basemap, drag and drop features, and share your project. Editor requires no coding skills."
  },
  "Mapbox GL JS": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-mapbox-gl-js",
    "title": "Mapbox GL JS",
    "summary": "Mapbox GL JS is a JavaScript library that uses Mapbox GL to render interactive maps. It's an open source library that's free to use."
  },
  "Mapbox GL": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-mapbox-gl",
    "title": "Mapbox GL",
    "summary": "Mapbox GL is a vector rendering framework for highly customizable and responsive client-side maps. Maps render at a super high framerate and allow for dynamic styling. It has implementations for both web and native platforms. The abbreviation, GL, comes from OpenGL, the industry standard Open Graphics Library. Mapbox Studio is a tool for creating Mapbox GL styles."
  },
  "Mapbox.js": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-mapbox-js",
    "title": "Mapbox.js",
    "summary": "Mapbox.js is a JavaScript library that allows you to add an your interactive map to your website. It is a plugin for Leaflet, and it is an open source library that's free to use."
  },
  "Mapbox Satellite": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-mapbox-satellite",
    "title": "Mapbox Satellite",
    "summary": "Mapbox Satellite is a global basemap of high-resolution satellite imagery. The imagery data comes from a variety of commercial providers, as well as open data from NASA, USGS, and others. It’s color-corrected and blended together into a single raster tileset."
  },
  "Mapbox Studio Classic": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-mapbox-studio-classic",
    "title": "Mapbox Studio Classic",
    "summary": "Mapbox Studio Classic is a desktop application for designing world maps. It allows you to design maps by using vector tiles and CartoCSS. Mapbox Studio Classic allows you to upload your map directly to your Mapbox account and then use your map style with our Developer tools."
  },
  "Mapbox Studio": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-mapbox-studio",
    "title": "Mapbox Studio",
    "summary": "Mapbox Studio is an online application for designing world maps. It allows you to design maps with vector tiles and Mapbox GL. You can use your map style on the web with Mapbox GL JS and in your mobile apps with the iOS SDK."
  },
  "Mapbox web services": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-rest-api",
    "title": "Mapbox web services",
    "summary": "The Mapbox web services are the\nlowest-level interfaces to Mapbox - they are the APIs that\nour JavaScript, Objective-C, and other systems are built upon."
  },
  "mapnik": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-mapnik",
    "title": "mapnik",
    "summary": "Mapnik is an open source mapping toolkit for desktop and server-based map rendering, providing algorithms and patterns for spatial data access and visualization. It is a collection of geographic objects like maps, layers, datasources, features, and geometries."
  },
  "MBTiles": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-mbtiles",
    "title": "MBTiles",
    "summary": "MBTiles is a file format for storing tilesets. It's designed so that you can package the potentially thousands of files that make up a tileset and move them around, eventually uploading to Mapbox or using in a web or mobile application. MBTiles is an open specification and is based on the SQLite database. MBTiles can contain raster or vector tilesets."
  },
  "monthly active users": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-monthly-active-users",
    "title": "monthly active users",
    "summary": "For native mobile apps built with the Mapbox iOS or Android SDK, we track monthly active users (MAU), also known as mobile users, instead of map views. This is the number of users that accessed maps within your applications during a given month. Map views are unlimited on Mapbox Mobile."
  },
  "open source": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-open-source",
    "title": "open source",
    "summary": "Open source software can be freely copied, modified, and shared. Many of the components of Mapbox are open source, including our core libraries and client integrations."
  },
  "OpenStreetMap": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-osm",
    "title": "OpenStreetMap",
    "summary": "OpenStreetMap is a collaborative mapping project that creates a worldwide base map. Unlike Google Maps, OpenStreetMap's data is free to share and use. The vector tiles in Mapbox Streets are based on OpenStreetMap data."
  },
  "PostGIS": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-postgis",
    "title": "PostGIS",
    "summary": "PostGIS is a tool for managing spatial data. It extends the popular PostgreSQL open source database to allow storage, management, and analysis of both raster and vector data."
  },
  "projection": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-projection",
    "title": "projection",
    "summary": "Projections are methods of transforming the coordinates of locations on the planet to a two-dimensional plane. Mapbox supports the popular Web Mercator projection. Web Mercator is adopted by the vast majority of web maps and its use allows you to combine Mapbox maps with other layers in the same projection."
  },
  "raster data": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-raster",
    "title": "raster data",
    "summary": "Rasters are a pixel-based data format that efficiently represent continuous surfaces. Information in a raster is stored in a grid structure with each unit of information, or pixel, having the same size and shape, but varying in value. All digital photographs are stored in this format, which is also referred to as a bitmap. This includes satellite images and orthophotography."
  },
  "referrers": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-referrers",
    "title": "referrers",
    "summary": "Referrers are statistics we collect to help you analyze the traffic coming to your maps."
  },
  "routing profile": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-routing-profile",
    "title": "routing profile",
    "summary": "A routing profile is a set of rules that a routing engine (like the Mapbox Directions API) uses to find the optimal route between two points. Routing profiles are generally optimized for the mode of transportation being used to get between locations."
  },
  "SDK": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-sdk",
    "title": "SDK",
    "summary": "An SDK, or software development kit, is a toolset for creating applications with certain functionality. Typically, SDKs are used for writing native code, meaning code that it is designed for a specific platform like iOS or Android."
  },
  "shapefile": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-shapefile",
    "title": "shapefile",
    "summary": "A shapefile, also known as an Esri shapefile, is a file format for storing geographic vector data. Shapefiles are good for storing medium-sized data, but are best used by desktop applications like Mapbox Studio Classic since they're hard for web browsers to read. When you you upload shapefiles, Mapbox converts your data to vector tiles so you can create styles from it."
  },
  "simplestyle": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-simplestyle",
    "title": "simplestyle",
    "summary": "Simplestyle is an open source specification for styling GeoJSON data. Features that you draw in the Mapbox Editor will keep these properties."
  },
  "sprite": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-sprite",
    "title": "sprite",
    "summary": "A sprite is a single image containing all icons included in a style. Sprites are often used in web development and even video games to improve performance. By combining lots of small images into a single image (sprite), you can reduce the number of requests needed to fetch all the images, improving performance and making your map faster. "
  },
  "style URL": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-style-url",
    "title": "style URL",
    "summary": "Any time you create a project with Mapbox Studio it generates a style URL. The style URL allows you to reference that specific style with the Mapbox GL JS API or native SDKs."
  },
  "style": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-style",
    "title": "style",
    "summary": "A style is a Mapbox GL stylesheet either created with Mapbox Studio or written independently and uploaded to your account. These styles adhere to the Mapbox GL Style Specification and include source data information, style layers, sprites, glyphs, and metadata."
  },
  "SVG": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-svg",
    "title": "SVG",
    "summary": "Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is a markup language for describing two-dimensional vector graphics."
  },
  "TIFF": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-tiff",
    "title": "TIFF",
    "summary": "<!--mapbox disable TIF-->"
  },
  "TileJSON": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-tilejson",
    "title": "TileJSON",
    "summary": "TileJSON is a format for describing tilesets. It keeps track of where to request the tileset, the name of the tileset, and any attribution that's necessary when using the tileset."
  },
  "TileMill": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-tilemill",
    "title": "TileMill",
    "summary": "TileMill is a desktop application for designing maps. TileMill is no longer in active development. For our most up-to-date map design tools, check out Mapbox Studio Classic and Mapbox Studio."
  },
  "tileset": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-tileset",
    "title": "tileset",
    "summary": "A tileset is a collection of raster or vector data broken up into a uniform grid of square tiles at 22 preset zoom levels. Tilesets are used in Mapbox libraries and SDKs as a core piece of making maps visible on mobile or in the browser; they are also the main mechanism we use for determining map views."
  },
  "Turf.js": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-turf",
    "title": "Turf.js",
    "summary": "Turf.js is a JavaScript library for spatial analysis. It includes traditional spatial operations, helper functions for creating GeoJSON data, and data classification and statistics tools. Turf can be added to your website as a client-side plugin, or you can run Turf server-side with Node.js. You can find the source code on GitHub."
  },
  "vector tiles": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-vector-tiles",
    "title": "vector tiles",
    "summary": "A vector tile is a lightweight data format for storing geospatial vector data, such as points, lines, and polygons. Mapbox uses vector tiles across virtually all our tools and services."
  },
  "VRT": {
    "url": "https://mapbox.com/help/define-vrt",
    "title": "VRT",
    "summary": "TileMill natively supports GDAL’s VRT, or Virtual Raster, format."
  }
}