topic Re: Web Appbuilder heading to extinction in Web AppBuilder Custom Widgets Questions

Web Appbuilder heading to extinction

LefterisKoumis — Thu, 11 Jul 2019 21:11:54 GMT

ESRI UC introduced a new product called Experience Builder ( ArcGIS Experience Builder | A new way of building web apps) which eventually will replace Web App builder. The new product will be based on JS API 4.x, React JS and Typescript. So, no more DOJO and Web Appbuilder will never be upgraded to JS API 4.x

The presenter said there are no plans to replace Web Appbuilder YET. We have seen it before when ESRI announced Web Appbuilder with no plans to discontinue support for FLEX. A year later they did.

Re: Web Appbuilder heading to extinction

MichaelVolz — Thu, 11 Jul 2019 22:04:29 GMT

Kory Kramer,

Can you validate that what the original poster is saying is true? This would have some major implications for my org's plans using GIS moving forward.

Re: Web Appbuilder heading to extinction

DerekLaw — Mon, 29 Jul 2019 17:51:34 GMT

Hi Michael,

Please see FAQ from the pre-UC 2019 Q&A,

Is ArcGIS Experience Builder going to replace Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS?

Hope this helps,

Re: Web Appbuilder heading to extinction

LefterisKoumis — Mon, 29 Jul 2019 18:47:08 GMT

Hello Derek.

Please correct me, if I was misinformed by one the ESRI UC presenters that the web appbuilder for 2D apps will not be upgraded to use JS API 4.x.

Re: Web Appbuilder heading to extinction

Jianxia — Wed, 31 Jul 2019 02:41:18 GMT

Lefteris, thanks for your comments. ArcGIS Experience Builder is the next generation of Web AppBuilder based on the 4 version of ArcGIS API for JavaScript. We plan to move most of the out-of-the-box widgets from Web AppBuilder to Experience Builder through incremental releases. Both builders will be running in parallel. We will not take away what you can do with Web AppBuilder and enable you to do better and more with Experience Builder. You apps built with Web AppBuilder should not be affected if you decide to stay. If you have any concerns, we are here to listen and help. As product manager for ArcGIS Experience Builder and Web AppBuilder, feel free to reach me at jsong@esri.com.

Thanks, Jianxia

Re: Web Appbuilder heading to extinction

LefterisKoumis — Wed, 31 Jul 2019 17:07:29 GMT

Hello Jianxia.

Thank you for your reply.

There are two questions that I think developers will need some clarification.

1. Are there any plans to enable developers to build 2D widgets in Web Appbuilder using JS API 4.x?

2. When the Experience Builder is ready, after all the out-of-the-box widgets migrated to this platform, will ESRI continue to update the web Appbuilder with new versions (widgets and themes)?

Thank you.

Re: Web Appbuilder heading to extinction

Jianxia — Fri, 02 Aug 2019 21:43:34 GMT

Hi Lefteris,

Good questions! There is no plan to enable developers to build 2D widgets with JSAPI 4 in Web AppBuilder as only one version of JSAPI is loaded into Web AppBuilder. This is also the reason that 2d and 3d builders are separated in Web AppBuilder. For the second question, unlike embedded web AppBuilder in ArcGIS Online and Enterprise, dev edition follows the product life cycle of ArcGIS API for JavaScript 3.x. If 3.x is retired, the dev edition built on it will be retired soon after. Understand, there is no easy way to migrate custom 2d widgets from 3.x to 4.x due to the latter has fundamental differences in the programming model compared to the former. See two Web AppBuilder related questions under UC 2019 Q&A->ArcGIS Developers section here. Hope this helps.

Thanks,

Jianxia

Re: Web Appbuilder heading to extinction

RodWoodfordOld — Tue, 20 Aug 2019 00:53:16 GMT

Hi Jianxia,

Thanks for the information above. Can I ask will ESRI continue to add new widgets to the WABD 3D environment. Its a little light on with functionality or do we now need to wait for the Builder Experience 3D development?

cheers

Re: Web Appbuilder heading to extinction

Jianxia — Tue, 20 Aug 2019 22:23:33 GMT

Rod,

We plan to add 3D Slice tool in Measurement widget this year in Web AppBuilder. Rich functionalities will come with Experience Builder. Since 2D and 3D are integrated into Experience Builder, the widget like Filter and Chart should work with feature layers regardless they are in the map or scene. Thanks!

Re: Web Appbuilder heading to extinction

RodWoodfordOld — Wed, 21 Aug 2019 00:38:19 GMT

Jianxia,

Would it be possible to at least add the query widget. It sounds like Experience Builder is going to be some time away in terms of full richness and we have corporate users wanting more functionality in the WADB 3D environment now.

thanks.

Re: Web Appbuilder heading to extinction

Jianxia — Wed, 21 Aug 2019 01:33:55 GMT

Rod, what other 3D widgets are used in this user's case?

Re: Web Appbuilder heading to extinction

RodWoodfordOld — Wed, 21 Aug 2019 01:56:09 GMT

Thanks for the prompt reply. They would be interested in the following if possible.

Query Widget, Select Widget, Attribute Widget, Draw Widget, Print Widget, Infographic Widget, Screening Widget and NearMe Widget . I put them in some sort of order of importance.

cheers

Re: Web Appbuilder heading to extinction

Jianxia — Wed, 21 Aug 2019 02:18:20 GMT

Rod, thank for sorting them out. I probably did not make my question clear. What I want to know are the 3D specific widgets, such as Slides, Daylight widgets, etc, which are not part of 2D widgets.

Re: Web Appbuilder heading to extinction

RodWoodfordOld — Wed, 21 Aug 2019 02:30:42 GMT

Sorry about that. We are using all available 3D widgets where possible. See one of our app links below.

ArcGIS Web Application

The pressure I'm getting corporately is why cant I include current 2D functions into the 3D environment.

Re: Web Appbuilder heading to extinction

RodWoodfordOld — Wed, 21 Aug 2019 23:50:58 GMT

Just to add to this would it be possible to add a 3D line of sight widget.

Re: Web Appbuilder heading to extinction

Jianxia — Fri, 23 Aug 2019 03:56:56 GMT

Rod,

Thanks for sharing the app. It looks great!

From a technical perspective, currently, 2d widgets in Web AppBuilder are written in JSAPI 3.x while 3D widgets are written in JSAPI 4.x. As these APIs do not share the programming patterns, we can't simply move the 2d widgets to the 3d environment without completely rewriting them in JSAPI 4.x. With Experience Builder built on JSAPI 4.x, we are able to integrate 2d and 3d so these widgets can be used regardless they are in the 2d or 3d environment. The list of widgets you provided will help us prioritize the development work on Experience Builder.

Hope this helps,

Jianxia

Re: Web Appbuilder heading to extinction

RodWoodfordOld — Fri, 23 Aug 2019 04:51:17 GMT

Hi Jianxia,

Thanks for the info. Look forward to seeing Experience Builder in the near future. All the best.

cheers

Re: Web Appbuilder heading to extinction

MichaelVolz — Mon, 26 Aug 2019 15:23:40 GMT

Jianxia:

Is Experience Builder not going to be supported in Internet Explorer? I ask because I've read that Edge is the replacement for IE with Windows 10, but Microsoft is thinking about dropping Edge for a different browser.

Re: Web Appbuilder heading to extinction

Anonymous User — Tue, 22 Oct 2019 16:10:33 GMT

I'll say, Experience Builder looks great! Although I hope Esri will continue supporting and even updating WebApp Builder 2D for at least another year or two in active development. It's going to be a large effort migrating dozens of production viewers to a very new architecture. I have some significantly customized WAB viewers that I have for various internal applications. WAB 2D does what it does quite well. I do not need 3D yet. I have done a couple 3D analyses in Pro for our airport and some line of sight commo stuff but no 3D viewers.

React / API 4.x do not solve too many problems I have, at least at the moment. MVC is cool. I can get in to that, I do .NET Core MD Bootstrap for sites. The Popup UI in 4.x will be better though this looks to be a design decision, as most of the things are possible in Dojo and 3.x - like moving popups, tabs, etc. Resizing could also be achieved. I'm wondering about this timeline because I am about to begin planning a major upgrade to 10.7 or 10.8 and Portal; and this is only to get Dashboards and featureLayer service tiling. The latter being a borderline need-to have because of slow performance for heavy layers from many users at once, and Dashboards being a very useful new kind of capability and that I want to host on premise. Therefore I need to focus on back-end next year. WAB took care of the front-end very well for us.

Experience Builder looks like a great compliment to WAB! I would be happy to have that in addition to WAB 2D 3.x continued with active development for another year or two... Jianxia Song do you have a cutoff date for when we'll stop seeing new updates to WAB 2D and/or JS API 3.x?

This is a bigger transition than Arc to Pro, for us in fact. With ArcMap to Pro, it's professionals who understand tools and interfaces change over time and we're ready (soon...maybe next year) to start the transition. Not too worried about that. By then hopefully most of the things in ArcMap will be in Pro. But with web viewers, they have deep integration with other systems and departments and also end users are far less tolerant of upgrading or changing interfaces. There has to be serious business reasons and ROI to 'sell' a change of interface to a user-facing application. When I went from my old Flex viewers to native JS API viewers it was an easy sell, with all of Flash's issues. Native JS API sites to WAB with its vast array of powerful tools was also an easy sell, our sites now can do so much more. The thing is, I've now heavily customized WAB to fix or improve many of its limitations and it has just reached a good state. Meantime, it's been great because the interface for WAB web viewers is now standardized, and the public is familiar with WebApp Builder's interface. I took time to write a detailed manual and YouTube videos for WAB. (example... SAGIS Property Map Viewer )

Re: Web Appbuilder heading to extinction

Anonymous User — Tue, 22 Oct 2019 16:11:17 GMT

Michael Volz‌ MS Edge is now going to be based on Chrome (Chromium) under the hood, so that may help.