What are .kmz files?

I am sorry if this query is off-topic here.

Many messages contain links ending in .kmz . Are they links to Google Earth views? How can I open them?  Or what are they?

The links at the tops of Google Earth links look like this :-

www.google.com/maps/@53.3670563,-2.2848361,2874m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en

(Manchester Airport (UK)).

How can I link to such links? I tried including such a link in a message, but the linker linked to the address as truncated at the first comma.

Jun 5, 2017 20:53:04 GMT anthonyappleyard said:

I am sorry if this query is off-topic here.

Many messages contain links ending in .kmz . Are they links to Google Earth views? How can I open them?  Or what are they? My Firefox web browser does not know what to do with them.

The links at the tops of Google Earth links look like this :-

www.google.com/maps/@53.3670563,-2.2848361,2874m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en

(Manchester Airport (UK)).

How can I link to such links? I tried including such a link in a message, but the linker linked to the address as truncated at the first comma.

Gooday Anthony,

Welcome to the NGEC.

KML and KMZ files, .kml and .kmz, are types of files created using the kml code for viewing in Google Earth.

The link you provided is simply a link to Google Maps.

See Here for the introduction and explanation for .kml files and code,, other topics from that page will provide more information.

Basicly, a .kmz file is one or mor .kml files zipped.

See Here for an explanation for the compressed .kmz files.

When a placemark is created or added in Google Earth it is a .kml or .kmz file that is created.

Save that file and when it is opened it will open Google earth and display the placemark etc.

Hope that helps.

Thanks.

I opened the .kmz link using Winzip, and it displayed a .zip-type list of contained files, this time including one .kml file. I extracted the .kml file into a directory on my computer. I tried to open that .kml file using my Firefox, and the result was a complaint that "This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below." and a screenful and a bit of .html code with many boldface codewords in angle-brackets.

I tried to open that .kml file using Internet Explorer, but I again got not a view but a display of .html code with many boldface codewords in angle-brackets.

If I copy the page-header line display from Google Earth's display, e.g.

"https://www.google.com/maps/@53.3568774,-2.3113047,2891m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en" (without quotes)

and directly use it in a web forum message as an .html web address to call Google Earth with the needed view, it works OK as such every time in Wikipedia, despite the included commas and ! and ? signs, but your forum's server tries to link to the web address as truncated at the first comma, as below:

www.google.com/maps/@53.3568774,-2.3113047,2891m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en

Hi, you need to download and install Google Earth for those files to work .

Download from HERE

Jun 6, 2017 7:50:49 GMT Admin said:

Hi, you need to download and install Google Earth for those files to work .

Download from HERE

I have installed that new version. It is very different from my old version, which is at least 4 years old.

I may have found some bugs still in this new version :: the instruction table says that in 3D view, ctrl-uparrow and ctrl-downarrow zoom in and out, but they are not doing that, and I can finds no other way to zoom in and out in this new version.

The instructions say that Google Earth viewing can be controlled by a joystick; but I was never a videogame player, and I have never had a computer joystick. What sort should I buy? Among joysticks, I have seen those built around a steering wheel, for car racing games; stick-dominated, for playing at piloting aircraft and spacecraft with various buttons attached; etc.

Jun 6, 2017 11:10:23 GMT anthonyappleyard said:

I may have found some bugs still in this new version :: the instruction table says that in 3D view, ctrl-uparrow and ctrl-downarrow zooj in and out, but they are not doing that, and I can finds no other way to zoom in and out in this new version.

The instructions say that Google Earth viewing can be controlled by a joystick; but I was never a videogame player, and I have never had a computer joystick. What sort should I buy? Among joysticks, I have seen those built around a steering wheel, for car racing games; stick-dominated, for playing at piloting aircraft and spacecraft with various buttons attached; etc.

You don't need to use a Joystick, you can use your mouse to navigate and operate Google Earth.

THe joystick is commonly used for the Flight Simulator feature on Google Earth.

In order to use a mouse, you should disable these two boxes, seen in this image below :




By un-checking these two boxes, you can use a mouse rather than a joystick.