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Traditional Layer Manager

Over the years the GIS interfaces have evolved and with the RIA technologies coming in, they have become more interactive, minimalistic and simple. One thing that has not changed much is the layer manager. Modern AJAX, Flex and Silverlight user interfaces brought in additional features like drag-drop to reorder layers, right-click context menus for additional options and sliders to change the opacity. But, it is still the tree structure!

The following illustration presents a slightly different approach aimed at making life easier for the non-GIS users:

New Layer Manager

Can it bring about a (r)evolution of the Layer Manager? Hope it does!

DART is a class-based optionally typed programming language for building web applications. Dart’s design goals are:

• Create a structured yet flexible language for web programming
• Make Dart feel familiar and natural to programmers and thus easy to learn
• Ensure that Dart delivers high performance on all modern web browsers and environments ranging from small handheld devices to server-side execution

Dart code can be executed in two different ways: either on a native virtual machine or on top of a JavaScript engine by using a compiler that translates Dart code to JavaScript.

Details and code-snippets available at the Dart Website.

Open Gmail. Compose a new message with the words "attach" anywhere in the body and attempt to send it without attaching any file.

Big Brother in Action! You’ll get a message prompting you to attach a file. It says something like: "You wrote "are attached" in your message, but there are no files attached. Send Anyway?"

Scary!

This requires that you enter a valid Phone number which is a mandatory field. The validation that is put in the phone number field checks for the United States format and throws an error if the format does not comply. No problem till now. But I have an Indian number and that starts the trouble!

In the form the country selector comes after the phone number so I need to first select the country and then go back and type in my phone number. It might not be a very big deal but at the end it breaks the user experience. It reprimands me for a mistake which I did not make but the designer of the form did not care to lay out the fields in a logical manner.

The ideal scenario for this for would be:

• Questions of the same category are grouped together – “Who am I?”, “Where I live and work?” And “How can I be contacted?”
• Questions are in a sequential manner so that the user can anticipate the next one
• The phone number can be validated based on the country as it has been already selected

Also note that the labels are aligned to the right. It is always easier to fill a form if the distance between the label and the field is minimal. The eyes need to work a little less in correlating.

In case you are displaying the information, then keep everything together aligned left.

Need to go and find the designer for whose mistake I was reprimanded! Till then…

I’ve not mistyped CSS as GSS! GSS is Geo Style Sheets and is a concept for styling maps on the client-side. That’s my latest toy!

All credits go to Cartagen (www.cartagen.org) for coming up with this novel concept. Try out the different style for the map of London at their site http://cartagen.org/find/london?gss=http://unterbahn.com/cartagen/warcraft.gss

Cartagen is a vector-based, client-side framework for rendering maps in native HTML 5. Written in JavaScript, it uses the new Canvas element to load mapping data from various sources, including OpenStreetMap. One of the advantages of this solution is the concept of geocss. Maps are styled with Geographic Style Sheets (GSS), a cascading stylesheet specification for geospatial information – a decision which leverages literacy in CSS to make map styling more accessible.

More examples will follow in due course. Let me know what you think. Will it take off or will it flop?

Some first-hand observations during the half day of usage:

1. Took approx 12 hrs to activate
2. Need to hardboot, take out sim, insert and boot again
3. Coverage was patchy, atleast in NOIDA. Most of the time it falls back on 2.5g (EDGE) inside my office in Sector 16. Keeps on switching back and forth between EDGE/3G even when I am in the same location
4. Has remained stable since the last 2 hrs but will get a proper picture once I change location. Have been in office all through so I believe the tower is locked.
5. Average speed: 1.2 mbps. Way below the advertised 21 mbps! Not even 7.2 mbps!

My package: Rs.450 for 600 mb

Will keep updating…

Update (March 16, 2011):

Repenting subscribing to 3g. It’s simply not usable. Why? Read on:

• In my office (Sector 16, NOIDA) where I am from 9:30 am till 7pm, if I am latched on the 3g network, I cannot make or receive calls. Even data is erratic.
• At my home (Sector 93A, NOIDA) where I am for the rest of the hours, there is no 3g coverage. So I end up not using 3g at all!

And I have already deactivated my good ole Rs99/- Unlimited data plan

Full Q&A released at the ArcGIS Online Blog (

—— // Update End  //——–

There is free lunch at ESRI!

ESRI has announced that they have made free their “High-Quality, Ready-to-Use Basemaps for Your GIS Projects and Web Applications” irrespective of the way you use them.

From the email:

As of the end of January, ArcGIS Online basemaps published and hosted by Esri are now freely available to all users regardless of commercial, noncommercial, internal, or external use. This means that you no longer have to pay a subscription fee for including ArcGIS Online basemaps in your commercial-use web applications.

Basemaps included in this new business model are World Imagery Map, World Street Map, World Topographic Map, USA Topographic Maps, and DeLorme World Basemap. The only restriction is a high-volume transaction limit of 50,000,000 transactions in a 12-month period, which is equivalent to 400,000,000 tile requests per year, or over 1,000,000 per day – a volume that most likely very few users will reach.

If you are concerned about reaching the high-volume level in a 12-month period, please contact the Esri regional office in your area to discuss alternatives. Local, state, and federal government users are not affected by this change. They can continue to make unlimited use of ArcGIS Online basemaps regardless of transaction volume. Developers also have unlimited access to ArcGIS Online basemaps for development and testing purposes via the ArcGIS Web Mapping APIs.

Read the ArcGIS Online blog to get the latest news and updates.

For me, 2010 was all about Flex and ArcGIS, having spent considerable time in this technology stack. My new year resolution is to explore how HTML5 and CSS3 fits into the Geospatial arena. Before I nosedive into this technology stack, I did a comparison on how the browsers live up to it using http://www.html5test.com. After a few seconds of scanning, this site gives a score on how the browser supports the many HTML5 features on a scale of 300.

The browsers tested were:

1. Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 Beta
2. Google Chrome 8
3. Firefox 3.6.6
4. Opera 11
5. Safari 5

The results:

1. Google Chrome 8
2. Safari 5
3. Opera 11
4. Firefox 3.6.6
5. IE 9 (Beta)

How browsers like HTML5

Verdict:
As long as you are targeting the mass public using Windows machines, stay away from HTML5. Microsoft just doesn’t like new technology. Period.

Road Ahead:
Being optimistic, I have a strong belief that people will make Chrome/Safari/Opera/Firefox as their default browsers and I will carry out my research on HTML5 in the geospatial arena.

End Note:
My dad uses Chrome as his default browser . I see light at the end of the tunnel!