Chapter 7. Styling Controls

So far, we've seen how we can customize nearly everything offered by OpenLayers—Layers, Controls, etc. However, we haven't been too concerned with the actual appearance of the interface of our maps.

OpenLayers provides pretty good looking default controls, so you may not find it necessary to change them. Like nearly everything else in OpenLayers though, changing the style and images used by the Control class is easy.

We talked about the Control class in the last chapter, and in this chapter we'll explore how OpenLayers applies styles to controls and how to go about customizing controls.

In this chapter we'll:

• Talk about what CSS is and what purpose it serves

• Discuss how HTML uses CSS

• Go over how OpenLayers uses CSS

• Cover the naming schemes OpenLayers uses for controls

• Give controls some custom styles

Let's dive in!