Class: WebMercator

Highcharts. WebMercator

new WebMercator()

Web Mercator is a variant of the Mercator map projection and is the de facto standard for Web mapping applications.

Web Mercator is primarily created for tiled map services, as when zooming in to smaller scales, the angle between lines on the surface is approximately retained.

The great disadvantage of Web Mercator is that areas inflate with distance from the equator. For example, in the world map, Greenland appears roughly the same size as Africa. In reality Africa is 14 times larger, as is apparent from the Equal Earth or Orthographic projections.