ArcGIS Explorer Blog

The Quick Content task is a recent addition to Explorer, introduced with the 480 release in June. It provides a simple way to create your own Web-based menu for adding and displaying information using ArcGIS Explorer. The following video clip shows how you can access the task, and begin using it:

The Quick Content task is not in the collection of tasks you see when you open the default map. But you can add it very easily by choosing Tools > Manage Tasks. You'll see it at the bottom of the default tasks list, just highlight it and use the arrow to move it to the right hand available in this map list.

When you first open Quick Content, you'll see a sample page that you can use as a template.

Click GeoTagged photo, and you'll automatically zoom to a result location (in this case the ESRI campus) and will see a photo appear in the popup window.

How'd we do this? The Quick Content example is just a Web page, and it could be anything that we can display in a browser. If we look at the Quick Content source (right click in the content and choose View Source), you'll see that the link we clicked to view the photo references an NMF file.

To create the NMF file we used the Create Note task to add a note result, using the the photo of the ESRI campus in the note description so it would open in the popup window. With the popup window open, we exported the result, and put it in a location that anyone could access (also making sure the ESRI photo could be externally accessed).

You can create your own Quick Content page, then just paste your URL into the address at the top. Below we used a local path, but obviously if you want this to be available to others in your organization or extenally, you would need to place it in an location that can be accessed externally. When you save your map your custom Quick Content will be available every time you open it.

You can add your own layers, results, and even tasks to the Quick Content, even making your own complete resource center (there are other ways to link your own resource center directly in Explorer using your own home server, which we'll cover in a future post). 

A Quick Content task was also demonstrated during the recent User Conference Plenary, covered in this blog post.

For more information see the Quick Content Help topic.

The new ArcGIS Explorer 500 Home Server files are now ready for download from the Explorer download site.

You can use a Home Server to:

• configure the look and feel of ArcGIS Explorer, including custom startup banners, logos, and north arrows.
• specify your own default map, including its layers, results, and tasks.
• add your own resource center, directly accessed from Explorer.
• control capabilities that users will have.
• and more...

For more information consult the Home Server Help after installing the files.

NOAA's National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center publishes tornado, wind, and hail reports on a daily basis, as well as offers an historical archive of past events. Under reports you can find the current storm reports, and also search back in time to retrieve previous reports. The reports are delivered as .CSV files, one of the formats that can be imported directly in ArcGIS Explorer.

Here's yesterday's hail reports shown in Explorer. By clicking on the report location we can view additional information, and can see there was golf ball size hail reported near El Paso, Texas, mostly pea-sized hailstones in Rosita, Colorado, and quarter-sized hail covering the ground near Elizabeth, Colorado.

And here's what the hail report looked like a year ago yesterday. There were many more hail events reported, and the hailstorms stretched from the Oklahoma panhandle through eastern Kansas, across the southeast corner of Nebraska, and on into Iowa and parts of South Dakota and Minnesota.

To make the maps, we downloaded the .csv file with the events that we wanted from the NOAA Web site. Once we saved the .csv file locally, we used File > Import and opened the file.

Using the Import Text File Wizard, most of the defaults worked perfectly. On the first panel we just accepted all of them (after looking at Data Preview to make sure things looked ok), and clicked Next...

On the second panel most of the defaults were exactly what we wanted, but we made two additions. First, we chose the Location field from the .csv file as our Title Field. This is what we wanted to be displayed as the hover text, and is also the title of the popup window. We also chose Comments as the field from the .csv file to use in the Description. This is what we wanted shown in the popup window contents.

And here's the final result:

See the File Import Wizard Help topic for more information on importing files.

The ArcGIS Explorer Team is pleased to announce that ArcGIS Explorer 500 was released just a few minutes ago. 

This is an update release that includes:

• Support for ArcGIS Online subscription services.
• Proxy server support improvements.
• A change to allow installation on machines running Windows 2000.

The new ArcGIS Explorer 500 home server files will be available later this week. For those that deploy ArcGIS Explorer from your own home server, you'll need to swap your versions and update your version.html file to push out the new release to your users.

There been a couple of post on the GIS Education Community Blog using Explorer for visualizing GPS tracks taken while paragliding. The first post uses data from a flight from Mount Herman, near Colorado Springs.

The second post shows what seems to be a daring glide from the Alyeska Ski Resort near the Cook Inlet in Alaska.

Data from both is intended to provide a lesson in GPS tracking and visualization, and is available at the ArcLessons Web site.

Recently we had a question about whether or not it was possible to open a PDF file directly in a result popup, and the answer is - Yes.

In this particular case the user wanted to open a local PDF file in the popup, which is easy to do. But that also means that others would also need to have access to that local folder to see the PDF appear in the popup. In a corporate network this is easy enough to do by places these out on a shared network location. But another way to provide broad accessibility extermal to your organization is to publish them from your server and use a URL in the popup content. Let's take a look at how this is done.

Here we've used the Find Address task to create a result, in this case it's the location of ESRI's Redlands campus. Opening the result properties you'll see the popup content is currently the address we used.

Now let's change that to open a PDF file, in this case a PDF document on our C: drive. Just enter the complete path for the PDF, but remember that other users will not be able to view the PDF since it's in a local location.

Here we've improved our accessibility by pointing to a PDF published from a server, in this case it's a PDF document published on the esri.com Web site.

In all cases, this is what you'll see in Explorer

As you can see it's easy to do, and you can popup other types of documents, media, and URLs. We've covered some of these in a previous post.

Click here to view the result and open its properties to see how it's been done.

For more information view the Result Properties Help topic.

Data can be imported and symbolized quickly and easily from a GPS device using the GPX data exchange format. According to Wikipedia it's an XML schema designed for describing GPS data between software applications. The GPX format encapsulates waypoints, tracks, and routes. With the release of Explorer 480, GPX became one of the formats that can be imported directly. Take a look at the video, then follow along in this post to learn more.

To import a GPX file choose Tools > Import File. You'll see the new option for GPX under Text.

Here we've chosen a GPX file that we downloaded from the topografix.com GPX examples. It's a GPX file of a mountain bike loop at Middlesex Fells reservation near Winchester, MA, named fells_loop.gpx.

When we open the file we're presented with the Import GPS options. We can choose to import everything, or just the waypoints, tracks, or routes. Since we're not sure what the file contains, we're keeping everything checked on.

After the import is complete, you'll see a result. Click to navigate to its location like we've done here.

The symbols that you see are matched to the icon name in the GPX file. A description of the symbol mapping can be found in the Explorer Help. You can always change your symbols via the result properties.

For more information check out the complete importing GPS data files Help topic.

"Geology happens," one of my college professors used to say. Wall Arch, located in Arches National Park along the Devils Garden Trail, collapsed sometime during the night of August 4, 2008. Now that's geology in action.

The arch, according to the Arches National Park Web site, was first reported and named by Lewis T. McKinney in 1948. For the geologists among us, it was a free standing arch in the Slickrock member of the Entrada sandstone. Before it fell, the opening beneath its span was 71 feet wide and 33 1/2 feet high.

Using ArcGIS Explorer we went to have a closer look, beginning by using Find Place to locate Arches National Park.

Below you can see that got us to Arches, but we still didn't know where Wall Arch was located.

To find the location of the fallen arch we went to the Explorer Resource Center (File > Resource Center)  and clicked the Layers tab to add the US Topo Maps layer (by clicking on its thumbnail). 

Once the topo layer was added we could zoom in and look for the Devils Garden area that the news item on the Arches National Park Web site mentioned. That proved easy to find, and as we zoomed in to view the 1:24K scale topo maps we found that the arch was clearly marked.

We could tilt our view to see how the arch formed along one side of a sandstone rib, typical of many of the park's 2,000 or so arches. Another interesting perspective could be gained by using the swipe tool to examine the imagery underneath the topo layer.

To complete our little geology exercise we used Create Notes to place a point at the location, changed the note title, and added the URL of the news item to the popup note text.

Here's the result (no pun intended).

We saved the result with an adjusted view property and the popup window open, so that when you click here to open it you will automatically zoom to the (former) location of Wall Arch and see the popup display the news item from the park's Web site. We could also have e-mailed the result directly from Explorer. Geology in action, Explorer in action!

The Explorer team had a great week, and we hope you did too. We really appreciate your feedback and comments from the sessions and in the Showcase. We'll be summarizing some of the questions and feedback here in future posts.

In case you missed it, here's a photo taken during the closing session on Friday, showing (left to right) Jack Dangermond, Dirk Gorter, Jim McKinney, David Maguire, Clint Brown, Nick Frunzi, Chris Cappelli, Don Berry, and Linda Hecht.

And just in case you haven't had your fill of User Conference photos to look at, ESRI has a Flickr set where you can find more. Or just search for "ESRI" or "2008 ESRI User Conference" at the main Flickr search.

The Showcase closed at 1:30 after another very busy day of sessions, meetings, demos, and more great feedback. Here's the crew at the close of the Explorer island area. From left: Euan, Mark, Bern, Michael, Andrei, Paul, Rob, and Edan.

Most users and some team members were headed to the UC Party, but some of the team headed towards home, or just relaxed. The SDCC waterfront from the Coronado side.

Jeff explaining how Explorer can be used along with ArcGIS server in emergency management applications.

(Left to right) Paul takes Explorer through its paces, Jeff showing Explorer in the fire and emergency response showcase, and Nick ponders before his workshop on using Explorer's SDK.

Joe (middle) works a KML over for a user (on left), Mark (right) seems to have a headache just looking at all that XML.

Today marked the opening of the showcase and general sessions, and it was a busy day all around. The Explorer team got lots of great feedback, and lots of suggestions for enhancements, and we're looking forward to more. Here's a few pics of the day's Explorer events.

Michael and Mark at the Doing More with ArcGIS Explorer session this afternoon. This session and the intro will be repeated on Thursday, the SDK tech session is Wednesday.

Edan makes a few points about Explorer in the Showcase island.

Rob giving his demo theater presentation on the Explorer SDK.

Michael, Andrei, Mark, Euan, and Paul still smiling at the close of the Showcase this evening.

The afternoon plenary "look ahead" at ArcGIS 9.4 and Explorer was hosted by 9.4 development lead Euan Cameron. Euan noted that Explorer has a rapidly paced release schedule, and that Explorer 600 will leverage some of the new capabilities being developed for ArcGIS 9.4, but will be released sooner.

Andy MacDonald delivered the preview of what the Explorer team has been hard at work on. Here's the new user interface which is based on the Microsoft Office ribbon. Andy showed how Explorer's tools and functions can be organized so they can be easily found. The new user experience, of which Andy is a key architect, will reveal only the tools that you need when you need them, simplifying thing for users and making for an uncluttered look and feel.

Andy also demonstrated how symbols are being organized, showing the new symbol gallery which allows you to choose from many different kinds of symbols that suit many different kinds of data and industries.

Andy mentioned that a continuing development focus is on presentation, and that the team has been working to improve these capabilities by providing tools that allow you to step though your map content much like you step through a slide deck, but an interactive slide show where you can pause and explore further, and include Web-based content.

Andy also showed how Explorer 600 will work with basemaps in different ways. He showed some of the new basemap choices, and how they can be used to layer directly underneath your own data. The basemaps can be easily swapped out, allowing you to visualize your information in different contexts. The basemap gallery allows you to choice from a variety of ESRI basemaps and basemaps of your own choosing.

Andy showed local data draped over terrain, and the controls in the ribbon which allow you to experiment with how your map looks. You don't have to open property pages to view your options, everything is right at your mouse tips.

Finally Andy showed how you can toggle from 3D mode to 2D mode on-the-fly, demonstrating how you can work with your content in either mode.  

Following Jami Garrison's excellent demonstration, Bernie Szukalski followed by highlighting additional capabilities introduced in Explorer 480.

First Bern showed Explorer running inside a Web browser. Explorer can be configured to fill the entire browser, or just a part of the Web page, which was shown (below). It's the same Explorer with the same features as when you run it on your desktop.

Next the newly added support for graticules (lat/long in various units) and reference grids (MGRS and USNG) were highlighted. Shown below is a lat/long graticule.

Bern next mentioned that Explorer had included support for several new kinds of services and data sources. First he showed a connection to a USGS GeoRSS feed with all the magnitude 2.5 or greater worldwide quake events that have occurred during the last weeek. Each GeoRSS feed location displays additional information via a link that is part of the feed when you click to open its popup.

Next, support for enterprise geodatabases, or data stored via ArcSDE was highlighted. Moving to show a part of the City of Redlands parcel database, Bern explained how map tips are now supported, displaying the owner name for each parcel as he moved the mouse over them, and also that the attributes displayed in the feature popup window could now be controlled.

One of the attributes displayed was a link that opened a new window onto the San Bernardino County Assessor's Parcel Information Management System. Bern explained that this was a mashup, but not a map-on-map mashup that was shown earlier, but rather a different kind of mashup. One that mashes up a features viewed in Explorer with an online information system.

The new e-mail capability was shown next. You can e-mail a layer, result, or the entire map. The e-mail message and the attachment are generated on-the-fly, making it easy to share your work with others.

Add Photo is a new task delivered with Explorer 480. Bern showed opening a folder and adding several geotagged images. Geotagged images have the lat/long of where the image was taken embedded in the image file header, and this task reads the header and places a result at the correct location of the image. When the result is clicked, the image is viewed in the popup window.

Next Bern used the Find Telephone task to locate the Grand Hyatt in San Diego, then explained that while these tasks are authored by the ArcGIS Explorer team that users can create their own using Explorer's SDK, which is also free to download. Bern showed some interesting and different kinds of mashups, these showing both Google Maps StreetView and Microsoft Virtual Earth Bird's Eye views via popup windows in Explorer.

During Monday morning's opening day plenary presentations, ArcGIS Explorer 480 was showcased. We'll review the Explorer presentations here.

Jami Garrison, from the Arizona Department of Transportation, was the Explorer featured user, and was introduced by Explorer product manager Bernie Szukalski. Bern explained that Explorer has been evolving rapidly, with the 480 release in July, and a preview of the forthcoming 600 release to be shown in the afternoon plenary session.

When ArcGIS Explorer starts, it connects to a home server which by default are ESRI's. But you can choose a different home server, and using your own you can control the startup map and tasks, the look and feel of the application, and enable or disable capabilities. Jami used a custom home server for Explorer, and had changed some elements of the skin; adding a custom logo, using a display overlay (for "ADOT Explorer'), a cactus north arrow, custom home page, and her own startup map and tasks.

Jami first talked about the need to connect to and use not only GIS assets in the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT), but also GIS content that comes from other state agencies and local governments that they work with. Here is a map showing the Maricopa Association of Governments IMS service along with ADOT's fuel depots.

Jami added results that showed ADOT's live traffic cameras, enabling users to get the most recent image of traffic conditions from a variety of locations along the highway system. By clicking on the result, the latest traffic image is displayed in the popup window.

At any given time, ADOT has numerous construction projects going on around the State.  Jami showed how aerial imagery helps ADOT track and monitor the progress of these multi-million dollar projects. These local data sources can be added quickly to Explorer, and tools like swipe and transparency can be applied to aid visualization.

ADOT's Explorer users really liked the ability to quickly add data to their maps using the ArcGIS Explorer Resource Center.   ADOT took that idea and created their own Resource Center to quickly distribute news and data to the Department's users.  For instance, if a user needs to view the Engineering Diagrams for a bridge, they can go to the resource center and choose what they want to view. 

Explorer zooms to the location of the bridge and then opens the Engineering Diagram in the popup window.

Jami described how the Incident Management teams at ADOT really like the ability to perform GIS Analysis right in the application.  For example, if there was an incident involving a chemical spill, the Incident Manager could right-click and send the location information to the model (in this case she used the Emergecny Response Guide (ERG) by Chemical model).   Then input some parameters about the incident: type of chemical (select from a drop-down list), wind direction, time of day and size of spill.    After the model is run, a containment area based on the input parameters is added to the map. 

Explorer has a lot of great features. ADOT has another type user, though, that does not need all of these features. They just need something simple so that they can quickly and easily get information about various incidents and projects around the state. The latest release of Explorer (Build 480) introduced the Quick Content task. The Quick Content is an embedded webpage so it can be quickly updated to provide current information on top events. Jami showed how easy it is to use the Quick Content to click on an icon and Explorer then zooms to the location of the event and pops up information about that event. The example below shows information about a landslide northeast of Phoenix.

The Quick Content area can also be used to get project data and information out to anyone. Jami demonstrated a project along State Route 260 designed to reduce vehicular collisions with wildlife.  ADOT had built several wildlife underpasses along this section of roadway but there were still a significant amount of crashes in the corridor. The Arizona Game and Fish deparment used telemetry from GPS-collared Elk to determine where they were crossing the roadway, as incidated in the analysis shown below (the high red columns are the areas where the elk were corssing the roadway most frequently). 

Using the analysis, the project team was then able to determine the locations to place fencing so that the wildlife could be funneled into the underpass areas.

The results of that project are then shown in the 2005 crash data where the amount of vehicular collisions with wildlife are greatly reduced, providing a much safer environment for both the wildlife and the traveling public.