For those of you who have read my showcase on the Transport Operations Centre Information Hub, mention was made on how we used the Sample Flex Viewer to deliver an interactive mapping interface or Common Operational Picture (COP in short). A fundamental element to note here is the word ‘Flex’ commonly known as ‘Adobe Flex’ or ‘Adobe Flash’, something I like to think of as ‘a programming language I’m not too clued up in’. Yes, the Sample Flex Viewer was built in Flex by ESRI, and even though the source code for it and the various widgets out there are readily available and I made some custom modifications during the Transport Operations Centre Information Hub project myself, at the end of the day I’m a software developer that is more comfortable within the Microsoft spectrum, fundamentally because thats what I’ve been playing with since I started programming and its been paying the bills ever since.
With that said, recently I had the opportunity to port what we had there to a Silverlight version and therefore happily jumped onto the task.
I’m proud to introduce the Silverlight COP!
ESRI Silverlight Viewer
I cannot take too much credit. It must be known that the ArcGIs Silverlight API is very easy to dive into due to ESRI’s excellent online samples (http://help.arcgis.com/en/webapi/silverlight/samples/start.htm). I also had some initial help when I found a post online where a guy by the name of diligentpig had already started such a port (for the love of me I can’t find that original post, so if he’s out there and stumbles upon this post, I’m apologizing). None the less, his version was in chinese and VS2008, which I upgraded to english, VS2010 and Silverlight 4.
Functionality that my version includes:
- Your standard navigation commands of Zoom In, Zoom Out, Full Extent and Re-center Map.
- Layers widget with the ability to set the ArcGIS Dynamic Layers you want to suscribe to in a configuration file. My demo is pointing to the following sample ESRI dynamic services: Census USA Info (http://sampleserver1.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/Demographics/ESRI_Census_USA/MapServer) and Cool stuff in California (http://serverapps.esri.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/California/MapServer)
- Overview Map, Bookmark widget
- The Standard ESRI Navigation Control in the bottom left
- GEO RSS Feed widget and the ability to set which Geo RSS Feeds you want to display via the configuration file
- Ability to Switch between a street map, topography map or imagery map and also the ability to set their services in the configuration code. My demo is point to the following sampe ESRI services: Streets – http://server.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/ESRI_StreetMap_World_2D/MapServer Topography - http://services.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/ESRI_ShadedRelief_World_2D/MapServer Imagery – http://services.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/ESRI_Imagery_World_2D/MapServer
If you are interested in seeing the source code, please don’t hesitate to contact us at NML.
Lastly, for a bit of fun, click the links below and have a look at the original flash version of the ‘pulsating red ring’ and my silverlight version. Which do you prefer?
Silverlight Red Glow
or
The cool thing about this is it was all done in Expression Blend 4 using story boards and animations. Click the code snippet below to see how it was done.
Red Glow Expression Blend XAML Code
