.Art's Place

The ArcGIS Silverlight/WPF Team has worked real hard over the past few months to get to a point where we now have our Release Candidate!  There are a lot of bug fixes, some of which we found, while others, the API users have found and reported either direclty to us or through the forums.  In addition to the bug fixes, we also have a few changes that you may need to know about. I will list out some of the bigger ones in this post.  You may want to read the What's New doc for the list.

Beta -> RC Updates / Changes

Namespaces- We changed the namespaces of the API's.  All assemblies and namespaces have been appended with name “Client”. For example: ESRI.ArcGIS.* has become ESRI.ArcGIS.Client.*. The change was made because some users were running into the issue of namespace collisions with other ESRI API's, such as ArcObjects.

The Widgets assembly not only had the same name change, we also changed the name from widgets to toolkit (ESRI.ArcGIS.Client.Toolkit.*). 

Bing Maps - One more that we needed to make is the now infamous Virtual Earth name change.  The Virtual Earth assembly is no changed to Bing (ESRI.ArcGIS.Client.Bing).

GraphicsLayer and Clustering - We had no idea that clustering was going to be so popular (ok, maybe we did a little).  Everyone wanted something just a little bit more o different.  So, we listened and made some changes to the way clustering works.

First, we moved the Clustering over to the GraphicsLayer from FeatureLayer.  Then, we made it customizable such that you can define the properties of the flare and cluster symbols. We also changed the Base clusterer implementation to take a LinearGradientBrush as a property to allow you to change the color scheme of the clusterer easily without any coding.

Here is an example of working with the Cluster on the Graphics layer.

<esri:GraphicsLayer ID="MyGraphicsLayer">
    <esri:GraphicsLayer.Clusterer>
        <esri:FlareClusterer 
                 FlareBackground="Yellow"
                 FlareForeground="#99000000"
                 MaximumFlareCount="20" Radius="10" 
                 Gradient="{StaticResource BlueGradient}" />
     </esri:GraphicsLayer.Clusterer>
 </esri:GraphicsLayer>

GraphicsLayer has an IsHitTestVisible property to enable\disable interaction with mouse events.

Don't forget to check out our new renderer samples inlcuded in the Interactive SDK.

See the Interactive SDK for more examples.

Tasks - We had a lot of feedback on Tasks.  So, we listened ad made some changes.  Tasks have an IsBusy property and a CancelAsync() method. When a task instance is executing (sending a request and waiting for a response) the IsBusy property returns true. To cancel execution, call CancelAsync(). We also changed Task operations to allow for including a user token (user defined object) when executing the task. The user token will be returned to the appropriate event handler when task execution completes or fails.

This makes working with the Tasks a whole lot better

New in the Release Candidate

RoutingTask has been added to support routing operations provided by ArcGIS Server Network Analyst services.

We also added a couple of more widgets to the toolkit,  the OverviewMap and a new Magnifying Glass.

When will we go final???

We look to be on target for releasing V1.0 - FINAL - at the ESRI UC 2009 on July 13, 2009. 

There are a few surpises this year at the UC ... but, that will have to wait for the public announcements.

I look forward to seeing you all at the UC.

I want to raise the awareness of proper design in creating web maps.  Now that the ArcGIS API for Silverlight is out and people are starting to use it, I want people to think about the problems that they want to solve.  Think about what those workflows are and how that can be best represented in the Silverlight application. 

As you know, the Silverlight platform will enable you to build a rich and interactive client experience, but we need to be cautious here - this does not mean that you need to have ArcGIS Desktop running in the Browser - instead, think about a simple, elegant and functional "User" application that can benefit from the Silverlight Platform.  Choose wisely, the UX animations and transitions so as not to clutter up the UI with too much "Eye Candy".

We sometimes get stuck in the "old hat" thinking that forces us down the path of adding things like TOC's and grid views in the web apps.  I want the Silverlight users to begin thinking out of the box and think simple - but with an eye towards enabling the users of your application to focus on the job at hand, not on a series of menus and toolbars.

Well, it is out there and ready to be used in Public Beta.  Check it out at here. The project was developed using a combination of Agile Practices and a practical use of eXreme.  The Silverlight/WPF team worked hard to get out a quality public beta.  However, it is beta, and we expect to hae some bugs.  That is why we need you to download and use the SDK and get us feedback.  So that you know who the members of the team are:

• Art Haddad
• Morten Nielsen
• James Goodrich
• Rex Hansen
• Rich Zwaap
• Bob Flores
  

One thing I want to point out is that the Interactive Samples, as powerful as they are, are truly meant to demonstrate the use of the API's and to help you get started.  Not be "out of the box" sample applications. We will be putting together some sample applications in the coming weeks that do demonstrate the use of these API's in real-world applications, until then, consider these a way to help you get started - more of Programming with the ArcGIS API for Silverlight/WPF 101.

We will be at ESRI's Dev Summit 2009 and available for all of those who are interested in talking with us.  I know we want to hear back from you.  So, download the SDK, start building some apps with it and let us know what you think!