First Thoughts On The October 2025 ArcGIS Online Update
Experience Builder Tips And Tricks is officially turning two years old tomorrow and to celebrate ESRI has given me something to write about, something that has become increasingly difficult since I ran out of ideas a full year ago. Yes, expect these twos to be totally and truly terrible.
Birthdays remind us of traditions and Experience Builder has a tradition of putting a major bug into every odd numbered release that makes it essentially unusable (at least to me). This is Experience Builder 1.19, btw. Let me check my math... 19 % 2 !== 0...yep, that's odd. Wonder what it will be this time? There's already a logged bug in the Feature Info Widget.
Frankly, I don't see anything I really need in this update anyway, but if you're on ArcGIS Online, you should be very excited because Themes have been totally redone to make them way better and even more visual customization options have been introduced for those of you who can't hack the CSS. Your apps are about to look a whole lot better. In six weeks, we'll find out if this breaks all the CSS hacks in Developer Edition.
Ok, let's properly get into it. Here's what happens in this series:
- I read the official What's New in Experience Builder Blog post.
- I maybe try a few things for a few minutes.
- I attempt to translate the What's New page from developer to English.
- If I don't think something is going to be very important to many people, I leave it out of my notes.
- I might make some guesses how the new stuff can be used. (Tips and Tricks LLC offers no guarantees that anything said in this post will actually work.)
MapViewer Update That Will Help in Experience Builder
Settings to make overlapping labels look better.
Accessibility
You can now enable a subpanel in the Settings Panel of every Widget that allows you to set screen reader text and make a Widget a priority for screen readers. The option is not on by default and it's super hard to find to make you feel what it's like to use a website that does not have good accessibility practices. Great on ESRI for promoting empathy for those with impairments. This will probably be in separate follow-up post, but look for A11Y in the bottom bar of the Builder to get these options.
The Widget Controller is now accessible and the List and Search Widgets can tell you about Suggestions and Search Result Changes.
The Chronology, Frame, Preface and Ribbon Templates have been accessibility optimized.
Builder
ESRI has fixed a major UI issue that has led to many new Builders coming to this site and asking why they can't add Widgets to their projects. If you have the Lock Layout or Live View options enabled, the Add Widgets Button Panel is inaccessible and if you try to click on the button, it will give you an option to turn those settings off.
General Settings
You can restrict Pages by User Types or Group Membership. Now, no one (but Admins that ignore any such restrictions) will know my dark, painful secrets.
Style Settings
Set the Foreground Color in the Background Settings. I don't know if it would be possible for ESRI to have written this section in a more confusing manor, but here's the deal: If you change the Background Color of a Widget it may not work well with certain Buttons/Text, now you can change that color, too.
Templates
New Template called Compass. It's Grid style. You can also find Templates from ArcGIS Online and Living Atlas.
Themes
The true star of this update. Themes have been thoroughly revamped. You can now define more than just a Primary Color. And if you make a bad choice and make your text unreadable, it should give you a warning. I'm just going to show you this Panel so you can see for yourself how many color choices you have now.
In the Typography Tab, import any font from the massive Google Fonts library. And the text dropdown menus are now written in their fonts. (Did one of my snarky, off-hand comments do this?)
The More Tab has some additional hard to categorize stuff like how round are your borders, what color are the text inputs and should your Links be underlined. Modern web design has drifted away from making Links stand out and Experience Builder defaults have followed suit, but accessibility standards do still prefer blue underlined Links.
Warning: If you convert app to one of the new Themes, there is no going back. So, it's probably best to Save A Copy of your project, before clicking one of the new Themes. It's going to change a lot of stuff.
Windows
Windows can be resized by dragging.
New Widgets
Image Collection Explorer - View individual images from a Dynamic Imagery Layer. You can even make new Imagery Layers.
Login - Sign people in or out of your app. Send them somewhere when they sign out.
Widget Updates
Accordion/Column - There's a Button now for adding Widgets to these Widgets. I was planning to say all Layout Widgets can do this, but no. Fixed Panel, Sidebar, and Row still have no equivalent option.
Add Data - File Geodatabases are now supported, but must be compressed to a ZIP file first. Exports are now allowed as well and you can choose what export types are allowed. Allow your users to upload their file or grab a web resource, do some editing or filtering, and then download the processed results.
Analysis - Can turn the results into a Map Service.
Basemap Gallery - Popups can be turned off for basemaps added by URL. It respects your organizations basemap ordering.
Business Analyst - Better UI tells users what Infographics are available to them. Exporting an Infographic comes with a Credit Usage Estimate.
PSA: Creating, viewing and exporting Infographics in Business Analyst inside or outside of Experience Builder costs Credits. Probably way more than you realize.
Chart - I haven't really done charts in Experience Builder, so I feel a little lost, but I think this should make sense if you're doing charts, so I'm just going to copy this paragraph in.
When setting intervals for time bins, you can now choose to have intervals be rolling windows, where the intervals are aligned to the first or last data point, or use calendar-based units of time. Additionally, you can use the new Prefer to use label check box to choose a sorting method for sort-by fields. In By field mode, check the box to sort by field label (alias) and uncheck the box to sort by field name. In By category mode, check the box to sort by attribute label (description) and uncheck the box to sort by attribute code (coded domain).
Edit - Batch Editing is now allow in Attribute Only Mode. Editing will stop if you put the Edit Widget in a Widget Controller and close it. Split and Merge are now available. And with that, Experience Builder has reached full functional parity with WebAppBuilder and everyone was super chill about this sentence in the comments.
Correction: The Expanded List is actually a brand new style of Filter. It looks like this:
Breaking Change Alert: GlobalID and GUID fields no longer allow partial matches.
Grid - Getting stuff to go where you want in the Grid Widget can be a bit frustrating at times. Insert Before and Insert After Buttons should make it a little easier.
Image Display Order - The Display Order Widget has a new, slightly longer name that better describes what it does.
Map - There have been a lot of requests to be able to restrict map extents. That's sort of possible now, as you can now limit the allowed Zoom Levels. Combine this with removing the map panning options and give the user Bookmarks or some other way to move to points of interest and you can trap them somewhere... Forevvvvvvvver.....Hahahahahahaha...Happy Halloween.
Pick a style for your Scale Bar. Tigger Near Me with the Locate Map Tool. And, use URL Parameters to set the Zoom Level.
Map Layers - Mosaic Sub-layers can now be customized. Remove layers added during runtime. If your search results are in a Group Layer, the Group will expand automatically.
Most importantly, what's not in this update, the Layer Batch Options still do not respect Layer Customizations. @Jianxia, we really need a way to make thematic layer groupings. This is one way. Bookmarks that don't change extents would be another. Can we get one, or preferably both, please? And...
My Location - Zooming to a new location is now optional.
Menu/Views Navigation - The color of the arrows is now an option.
Near Me - Calculate the length or area of intersecting features and include this in exports.
Oriented Imagery Viewer - Force zooming to the extent of Oriented Imagery Layers.
Search - Breaking Change Alert: URL Parameters have been renamed. serviceEnabledList is now enabledList and searchText is now text. Bet this is going to annoy a lot of people.
Table - Configure every tables for every layer at once, but you can still change stuff for just one table if you want. Restrict the tables to the layers in the map extent if you want. Choose between scrolling or a multi-page table. Keep a row at the top or bottom of the table always visible.
Timeline - Do 3D stuff now.
Widget Controller - Customize the size of your Widget Controller Buttons. Wonder where they got that Idea? The icon size and spacing is also customizable. Resize the Widget Panels with your arrow keys. Put a Widget Controller in a Widget Controller. Maybe you could make a neat nested menu, but remember that if you try to put a Button Widget in a Widget Controller it won't just work, it will pop-out a Panel with a Button in it. Would be nice if Buttons in a Widget Controller just worked.
That's the end for this update and we are beyond WebAppBuilder now. It's Season Six of Game of Thrones and the show has reached the end of the books. I'm told that's when it really gets good.
