disabling 'grab' panning for bing maps control

Question

How do I disable just the grab aspect of panning for bing maps AJAX control 7.0?

I have tried this -

var map = new Microsoft.Maps.Map(document.getElementById("mapDiv"), { credentials: "bing maps credentials", mapTypeId: Microsoft.Maps.MapTypeId.road, disablePanning: true});

But setting the disablePanning property in the map options not only disables grab panning but also zoom panning. Zoom becomes not completely disabled but instead will only zoom in and out on the center of the map. No doubt you will have come accross zoom panning where you can use the mouse scroll wheel to zoom in on the map under the cursor and therefore can pan around by zooming in and out and moving the cursor. I would like to have zoom panning enabled but grab panning (where the user depresses the mouse and drags it around) to be disabled.

I am aiming for functionality very similar to when using the my places editor on the main bing maps site. When using the polyline tool to draw on the map grab panning is disabled and zoom panning is enabled just as I would like. I am actually intending on creating a custom drawing tool similar to the polyline tool in the my places editor.

I have been studying the api but have not discovered how to do it yet. I have also tried to discover how it is done on the main bing maps site but as the javascript code is all minified I am finding it very difficult. I have managed to gleen that the polyline tool hijacks the mouse, but that is about all.

Surely there must be a simple way of doing this. How is it done?

Bojin Li Bojin Li · Accepted Answer · 2012-04-30T01:24:44

I don't think there is a map option you can set to achieve the behavior you want(enable zoom panning/disable grab panning). However, there is an easy way to hack it. The panning is initiated by the user clicking down on the map and moving the mouse. So if you can supply your own mousedown event handler for the map, and in its implementation prevent the default behavior of the mousedown, you should be good to go. Turns out the handled property on MouseEventArgs does just this:

Microsoft.Maps.Events.addHandler(yourMapObj, 'mousedown', function (mouseEvent) {
    mouseEvent.handled = true; //A boolean indicating whether the event is handled. If this property is set to true, the default map control behavior for the event is cancelled.
});

With this, mousedown events on the map are processed by you and ignored by the map. So when the user tries to pan the map using the mouse, nothing happens. They can still click and zoom around as usual. Keep in mind if you have other elements on the map such as pushpins and shapes, this will prevent the mousedown event from reaching them. So any mousedown event handlers you registered on them will not get called. You can handle this either by unregistering the above handler when you want the other mousedown events to be called(preferable), or interogate the target property on your MouseEventArgs to see what fired the mousedown(messy).

disabling 'grab' panning for bing maps control

1 Answers