idea ArcGIS Arcade Playground Quality of Life Improvements in Developers Ideas

ArcGIS Arcade Playground Quality of Life Improvements

deleted-user-pZlUMHhkW23Q — Wed, 07 Nov 2018 15:04:06 GMT

The ArcGIS Arcade Playground leaves much to be desired for people want to develop using Arcade.

Fig. 1 -- Current Arcade Playground as of 2018-11-07Suggest the following quality of life improvements:

Problem: Console messages and Error messages don't display the line number of execution. This makes debugging more difficult.
- Solution: Show the line number. Full traceback option would be great too.
Problem: The Expression window is only 10 lines long by default. This makes it difficult when write longer scripts to follow along as see your work. You can make it longer by closing the results/messages window but you have to close it every time, which breaks up the workflow and the extra click is tedious.
- Solution: Make the code window longer by default, and move the Results/Messages window elsewhere. see Figure 2, and Figure 3 below of suggests of layout redesign.
Problem: The filter option is currently only available on the Functions section but not on fields.
- Solution: Extend the filter to work on fields as well. Would help speed up the lookup of fields.

Fig 2 -- Header Allow to scroll-up on the Header

Fig 3 -- Layout Redesign

Re: ArcGIS Arcade Playground Quality of Life Improvements

ShawnRoberts1 — Fri, 07 Dec 2018 15:04:57 GMT

This is an absolute must! A few times now I have found myself having to create very large, complex expressions (either for AGOL apps, or for Geocortex Workflow 5), and have suffered through having to use this, as it's really the only option to build and test expressions. The inability to resize elements to and create functional space, the lack of debugging abilities when compared to other modern builders make it almost impossible to use, and certainty adds a lot of wasted time when trying to finish projects.

Another small thing that would be nice to see is autocomplete. Most environments offer autocomplete options, and allow you to hit tab to complete. It would just speed up the building process.

Re: ArcGIS Arcade Playground Quality of Life Improvements

KristianEkenes — Wed, 02 Jan 2019 18:29:36 GMT

Thanks for the suggestions. We're actually in the process of redesigning the Arcade editor and have already made plans for most of these points. Something we don't yet have is the line number in error messages and the autocomplete capability. We'll evaluate these to see how feasible they are for the new editor.