Last week on an Eclipse Foundation Locationtech teleconference, Tim Schaub of OpenGeo outlined the plans for the next version of OpenLayers.   You can watch the video and contribute to the effort  here.

OpenLayers2 was released in Aug 2006.  It implemented a lot of the cool stuff based on AJAX and tiles in Google Maps as a Javascript library.  OL2 became the open-source standard for slippy maps and the most widely used geospatial Javascript library. 

The technology ecosystem at that time was very different from today.  For example, IE6 had about 86% of the browser market and mobile devices did not support Javascript.  Since then many things have changed, but since backward compatibiity has always been a priority for OpenLayers, applications that ran in 2006 still run today.  Some of the reasons that OpenLayers became so widely adopted are support for many different formats and protocols, both proprietary and open standards, support for multiple geographical projections,  and advanced vector editing and rendering, first introduced in OL2.4. 

But overtime backward compatibility and the evoluton of the library in a rapidly chaning technical world has meant that cruft has accumulated and it is felt that it is time for a major upgrade to OpenLayers.

Goals of OpenLayers3

The major goal for the next major version release of OpenLayers is to build on existing OL2 functionality, but to make it small for fast loading and fast running.  It is also intended to have broad functionality, all of which is tested together, unlike some of the micro frameworks that have appeared recently.  OL3 also needs to be more friendly, includes a new, clean API and a modern look for UI components.

Some of the important new capabiltiies planned for OL3 include

• Separated renderers – support for both traditional DOM as well as WebGL renderers.  In the future there could be renderers for PDF and Canvas 2D. 
• Google’s Closure Compiler – allows you to build javascript libraries that include just the code you need to run your application, to run it in a specific browser or on a specific device, or to run it with a specific renderer.
• Cesium – the intention is to integrate the new Cesium library to enable full 3D spinning globe capabilities in OL3.

Some of the other developments planned include oblique views, animation, cameras, and tutorials and improved documentation.  More technical details about OL3 can be found here.