Tag Archives: folder
Customizing ArcGIS Explorer Desktop Part 6 – Custom Map Item Icons
Several users had requested the ability to specify custom icons for their ArcGIS Explorer Desktop folders, providing visual queues for their contents. With the release of the ArcGIS Explorer Desktop build 1500 API we added this capability. But more than just supporting custom folder icons, we extended the capabilities to include all map item types.
You can’t change the icons using the default user interface, but it’s easy to do using the ArcGIS Explorer Desktop API. Let’s take a look at an example.
Prior to build 1500 you could add folders to the contents window using the application UI, or programmatically using the API. In either case you could not change the default folder icon. To add a folder using the UI, click the Folder button on the Home Tab.
In the example below we’ve created three folders – Police, Fire and Ambulance. Each of them use the same default folder icon.
With ArcGIS Explorer Desktop build 1500, when you create a folder using the API you now have the option to specify a unique icon. The code example below illustrates how we created the same three folders programmatically, assinging a different icon to each.
The result of running this code from a button icon is shown below:
It’s worth pointing out that any changes made to the icons of map items appearing in the contents window will get saved with the map document.
(Mike Branscomb & Mike Rudden – ArcGIS Explorer product engineers)
Checking your local cache folders
By Kenny Ling, Esri Cartographic Product Engineer
We got a good question some time ago on Ask A Cartographer about finding the path to your map tiles in your local cache using the tile URL exposed by the REST endpoint. The person who posted the question had some missing tiles in his map and wanted to see if they were in his cache folder. He managed to get the URLs to the map tiles using Firebug but wanted to know how to find the path to the corresponding cache tiles on his computer. Missing map tiles is a problem that some of us encounter with our cached maps, so checking the tiles in the cache folder is a good practice to verify that your tiles are caching the way that it is meant to be. This process however, is something that people often overlook or find to be too tedious to do. This blog post explains how to check your cache tiles and the reasons why you would want to check it. Continue reading
