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Drawings in Draw widget disappearing

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2 weeks ago
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DanCopKac
New Contributor II

When using the Draw widget, and having drawings within the ExB app, if I try to drag the browser window to another screen, and in the process the screen gets resized, all of my drawings disappear. Is this a bug or intended behaviour? 

I'm trying to migrate our apps from WAB to ExB and noticed that the same doesn't happen in WAB. All the drawings continue to be preserved when dragging the window or resizing it. 

Together with being unable to customize scale bars or add additional scale bars in ExB, and the Draw widget not having a dedicated text functionality, it has been more than a frustrating endeavour trying to migrate apps from WAB to ExB. We are a major NA railway and it's really not a good look for our GIS dept trying to sway corporate managers and upgrade the organization to ExB. 

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JeffreyThompson2
MVP Regular Contributor

Some additional information for the product team. The graphics are apparently being cleared by the global re-render when crossing one of the screen size breakpoints.

GIS Developer
City of Arlington, Texas
DanCopKac
New Contributor II

How do I make it not do this? Multitasking is a pretty big part of our dept. 

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MattiasEkström
Regular Contributor

Make sure the browser window width not cross one of the breakpoints 992px and 576px
https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-experience-builder-questions/what-are-the-break-points-for-larg... 

But I assume this is a bug that I hope Esri fixes as soon as possible.

DanCopKac
New Contributor II

Is there a setting somewhere in ExB where I can restrict my app users from resizing their window beyond these screen sizes? I don't think my executives will understand if I tell them not to resize their window beyond these pixel values. 

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JeffreyThompson2
MVP Regular Contributor

Re-sizing of windows is a property of the operating system. It's not controllable through Experience Builder.

GIS Developer
City of Arlington, Texas
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DanCopKac
New Contributor II

Hmmm okay. Are there any other alternative measures for me to deploy in case my execs run into the issue and lose their drawings?

I just want to make sure their anger is directed at Esri and not at me; all they see is that I am the one who praised Experience Builder before and pushed them to "upgrade" to Experience Builder (due to the deprecation timeline) instead of WAB when everything was "working fine before". Perhaps an official note detailing this issue?

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JeffreyThompson2
MVP Regular Contributor

Every piece of technology ever invented has flaws and limitations. Expecting otherwise is simply not realistic. Experience Builder is a deeply flawed masterpiece. There are many things it does well, many things it does poorly and other things it fails at completely. Experience Builder's greatest strength is flexibility and modularity. If you can use custom widgets, your best solution would be to switch to the Custom Draw Widget as it better matches your needs. Other than that all you can really do is educate your users and wait for an official fix.

GIS Developer
City of Arlington, Texas
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DanCopKac
New Contributor II

To be fair, when we're scoping WAB to ExB migration projects, we look at the documentation, which summarizes that like ExB has 80-90% parity (or more) with WAB and WAB is starting deprecation in July 2024. (It is now mid-June 2024.)

In the tech industry, video games, smart devices, etc., I believe we have come to expect that all existing technology will have workflows in place to carry out existing processes before the old workflow is deprecated so as to not leave a functionality gap.

Just look at the backlash and controversy of Warcraft 3 Reforged when Blizzard released it without pre-existing Ladder, Profiles, Automated Tournaments capability, just to name a few. Blizzard then issued a formal apology, and their customers were STILL very dissatisfied. It's STILL sitting at a 1.4 star review because of it. We have all been, and still are, much more patient. 

w3r.PNG

It's not until one makes assurances to the brass, gets project funding, kicks off the migration projects, and gets heavy into development that the truth comes out about actual widget parity, only then realizing that the parity documentation (function parity matrix in this case) has been largely embellished (almost to the point of lying through one's teeth) and that claims of widget function parity only have to reach about 50% function coverage to garner a "Yes" on the documentation. (To a reasonable layperson, a "Yes" ought to mean... maybe 95% or even 100% function parity? Especially when it's just before deprecation of existing technology.)

I'm sure that my team and my project aren't the only organizations that over-trusted Esri's documentation to kick off the migration project, only to find it all fizzling out with execs getting incredibly annoyed and our heads on the chopping block. While others and I can wait patiently, even giving up our jobs and positions due to project failure, and try to find alternative solutions or income, 'tis often the executives that are far less understanding. 

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Shen_Zhang
Esri Contributor

Thanks for reporting, we are aware of the draw issue when resizing the app to mobile size. ExB uses a different mobile responsive mechanism so we need to do some extra work here.

For draw text function, it's in our product plan and is in progress, we will update with you once we have a timeframe for it.

Thanks, Shen

Shen Zhang