Latest Contributions by BenjaminAbbott

‎12-27-2017

We're looking to deploy some of our public GIS functionality to ArcGIS Online, specifically using Web App Builder. We're a local authority, and have a user base with the full range of abilities. Unfortunately, we have issues with the usability of this template - obviously a map-based website isn't going to meet all WAI standards; I mean usability in a more pragmatic sense. We're going to be using the legend, layer list and basemap widgets for everything, but to my mind their icons are going to be fairly impenetrable to the general public user. Come again? Funky ladder, exploded sandwich.... is that a pizza? I'd like to be able to toggle labels on and off. I appreciate this will require some tweaks to margins and so on, and will not work at all well for the vertically stacked layouts, but for another 15 or so pixels in height, automated width & 5 pixel padding you can have this: Which won't terrify our older or less confident users nearly as much as renditions of foodstuffs. They came here to find out where to vote... Flippancy aside, I realise it's a hard job to come up with an icon which epitomises an abstract concept, and they're good once you understand what they do - but I don't think they convey enough meaning in a 30px square.

‎12-27-2017

We're looking to deploy some of our public GIS functionality to ArcGIS Online, specifically using Web App Builder. We're a local authority, and have a user base with the full range of abilities. Unfortunately, we have issues with the usability of this template - obviously a map-based website isn't going to meet all WAI standards; I mean usability in a more pragmatic sense. We're going to be using the legend, layer list and basemap widgets for everything, but to my mind their icons are going to be fairly impenetrable to the general public user. Come again? Funky ladder, exploded sandwich.... is that a pizza? I'd like to be able to toggle labels on and off. I appreciate this will require some tweaks to margins and so on, and will not work at all well for the vertically stacked layouts, but for another 15 or so pixels in height, automated width & 5 pixel padding you can have this: Which won't terrify our older or less confident users nearly as much as renditions of foodstuffs. They came here to find out where to vote... Flippancy aside, I realise it's a hard job to come up with an icon which epitomises an abstract concept, and they're good once you understand what they do - but I don't think they convey enough meaning in a 30px square.

‎10-20-2017

This remains an outstanding issue with JS API 3.22; we're consuming a secured WMTS service, and need to inject authentication details through the proxy page. Instead, all WMTS requests are routed directly to the URL specified within the ResourceURL element of the GetCapabilities document.

‎05-27-2016

Yes - that's exactly it. I need it to 'just work' from the point of the end user. Manual label positioning isn't an option. We could potentially make this work, the only issue with the solution above is the label is positioned relative to the absolute centre point of the graphic, and not relative to the edge of the symbol (as it would with a labeled feature layer). A little fudging would be required, but a lot less than managing a bunch of synchronous feature layers. Much appreciated both.

‎05-27-2016

That would work where the graphic was a saved version of an existing feature from a known feature layer - my question is more targeted toward the labeling of graphics which users draw themselves. I have a proof of concept which uses a (programmatically created) feature layer which can sit below the graphics layer and generate appropriate labels, but I haven't found a way to suppress the symbol for this feature layer completely. Therefore, showing and hiding of graphics in the "saved items" list is broken because the underlying symbol is always visible. We also give users an interface to change the colour, size and shape of point features, for example, so if the label is attached to a symbol in a feature layer below with its own size, and the user increases the size of their graphic, the offset of the label in the underlying feature layer will be incorrect. I don't think using a feature layer to actually hold the user-drawn graphics is an option because they will all potentially have different symbols.

‎05-27-2016

Thanks for your reply. That's not really what I'm looking for though. I'd like to leverage the inbuilt alignment properties of the LabelClass, because: 1. Spatially positioned text labels don't work at multiple scales (especially a problem when printing), and 2. Our interface is crowded enough as it is. The audience for this tool are not GIS professionals, so I need a generic solution which requires little to no thought from the user. They need to be able to check a box which says "Label this", and the system needs to make a good, educated guess as to how to label the graphic. We do that with Dynamic Layers on server-side & it works remarkably well. Unfortunately, users cannot label their drawn graphics without resorting to a new graphic of type TextSymbol, and spatial positioning. We do use local storage for a lot of this stuff actually, but my performance concerns are based around adding more and more layers into memory. We have some Citrix clients, and this is a real problem for them.

‎05-27-2016

I'd like to arbitrarily label elements within a GraphicsLayer, using the appropriate label-position values from the client-side labeling engine. This would need to be done per-graphic, as this GraphicsLayer can contain multiple geometry types. There are a number of posts on this, but none have an appropriate solution. A member of ESRI staff posted an example which worked under API 3.9, but is broken in subsequent releases: https://community.esri.com/message/381496#comment-381496 Other solutions involve adding extra FeatureLayers to then either assign to LabelLayer (which is deprecated), or use the now preferred labeling capabilities of the FeatureLayer itself. Our use case: we use a GraphicsLayer to manage a "saved items" panel on our fairly sophisticated JSAPI-v3-driven web GIS. Our users want to be able to label graphics without the hack method if adding a TextSymbol "somewhere underneath the blob". This is horrific, and our users often end up with junk print outputs. I've experimented with running labelled FeatureLayers for each geometry type in the background, but this too is horribly compromised, and adds a lot of processing overhead to an already complex application. Any suggestions appreciated.

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Date Last Visited	‎01-06-2021 04:29 PM

My Ideas

Latest Contributions by BenjaminAbbott

Icon labels in Web App Builder

Icon labels in Web App Builder

Re: WMTS Requests over proxy

Re: Adding labels to a GraphicsLayer (API version 3)

Re: Adding labels to a GraphicsLayer (API version 3)

Re: Adding labels to a GraphicsLayer (API version 3)

Adding labels to a GraphicsLayer (API version 3)

Icon labels in Web App Builder

Icon labels in Web App Builder