Introduction

It is worth mentioning that in software applications, the first impressions are the most important things, and they are given by two factors: the look and feel.

This chapter is all oriented to show how we can improve the look and feel of our web mapping application by theming OpenLayers.

As many other web applications, the look and feel of the OpenLayers library is controlled using images and CSS classes, which define the position, dimensions, and visual aspects of any OpenLayers component.

At this moment, with the Version 2.11, we can find the img and theme folders within the bundle distribution, and both are used to control the look of the OpenLayers applications.

Tip

Remember to place these folders in your project when using OpenLayers as mentioned in the Different ways to include OpenLayers recipe in Chapter 1, Web Mapping Basics.

The theme folder contains CSS files, as well as some images used within the CSS, while the img folder contains only images, used by some controls in...