Introduction

Up until now, we have used Mapbox Editor to create and customize our maps. We have seen how feature-rich and powerful it is and how, using just a web interface to customize your map, it provides you with so many possibilities. We were able to totally customize the color theme, add markers and features, and customize their appearance.

Although powerful, there are times when you need more control. What if we want to change the widths of the lines that represent roads? What if we want to totally customize this width over different zoom levels? What if we want a custom font, or even better, a different font (or font size) at each zoom level? What if we want to hide or show features when a user zooms in or out?

The possibilities are endless, and the power of unlocking this level of customization lies in a language called CartoCSS. Well, it's not exactly a language like C++ or PHP, with objects and complicated memory management, but it is a much more user-friendly, stylesheet...