Oct

27

MapFlashViewer Framework: ASP .NET Implementation (C#)

Filed on October 27th, 2006 at 8:50 pm under , , , , | 1 Comment 

It is very easy to get started with the MapFlashViewer Framework in the ASP .NET Implementation (C#) I talked about in this post.

This implementation was written using ActiveX Connector for ArcIMS 9.0 and C# MapScript for MapServer 4.10.0. You can easily adapt the code for previous or next versions.

Open the solution

You will find several files in the C# ASP .NET project included with the solution you downloaded:

  • A simple default.aspx web form with the MapControl user control over it
  • A form test.aspx for debugging purpose (you don’t need unleass you are in troubles)
  • the Controller (responsable for translating XML request/response to the Flash UI): the xml.aspx page
  • the FlashViewer.ImageMapServer namespace with the classes needed for the .NET implementation (particullary impourtant are MapServerFactory.cs, MapServer.cs and ArcIMS.cs)
  • the MapControl user control

You should easily follow how it works the implementation, for simplicity you can take a look at the UML Class Diagram (that should be the same for each environment implementation):

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Oct

26

MapFlashViewer Framework

Filed on October 26th, 2006 at 4:23 pm under , , , , | 13 Comments 

MapFlashViewer Framework is a simple Flash viewer for several (even any, if someone intends to write an implementation) internet map server (at the moment I wrote an implementation for Esri ArcIMS and MapServer).

You can view a working demo of MapFlashViewer for Esri ArcIMS here and the same working demo (with same data) for MapServer here.

Why using Flash?

It has always been a pain writing web user interface for web mapping. The most common approach is to write javascript client code to perform the main GIS actions (zooming, panning, etc etc).
There is also some example of java applet GIS web interface, but the problems with applet are performances, generally very slow.
IMHO the best way to write Rich UI for the web, like a GIS web interface is, is by using Flash: quick, rich OO programming environment (ActionScript), compatible for every browser (not like javascript) and a couple of other reasons.

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