Google Maps Api V3 - Styling countries or cities

Question

I am trying to make a map, just for selected area, lets say country, and get rid of some of the labels and stuff that are on the map. I found a styles wizard: http://gmaps-samples-v3.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/styledmaps/wizard/index.html But my question is, if u can somehow hide smaller cities, or other countries than my selected one?

I know i can hide all cities at once, or that i can hide borders, but i am curious if i can leave main cities visible, and for example gray out other countries than USA or i would have to manually create biggest polygon ever everywhere except USA? o.o

Answer 1

Unfortunately, Google Maps API doesn't offer a way to selectively hide labels in an area. You can only remove labels for the whole map in several categories - e.g. using MapTypeStyle containing:

{
    featureType: "administrative.country",
    elementType: "labels",
    stylers: [
        { visibility: "off" }
    ]
}

hides labels with country names.

To hide an area you have to create your own overlay - some polygon or overlay map type.

When you want to show only an area of the map, it might be also a good idea to limit viewable area of the map.