Using Adobe Flash (Macromedia) as a client for Arc/IMS (ESRI).

Build your own google earth alike GIS viewer for your map services. The European Environment Agency is building many viewers and gives it's tools and components as an open source license free of charge to the public. Get the compiled components and classes. or Get the source code and use them on your own web sites. This is all about contributing and helping each other. It's important that you give feedback.Simply use the discussion forum or the wiki help.

News!

We are moving the entire site towards http://www.flashmapping.org/

The wiki_help pages have a search functionality now...

Daniel found out how we can connect to ArcGis server using SOAP and flash. Anybody interested in joining how we can make connectors for those?

WMS is fully supported. The connectorl supports 1.0.0, 1.1.0, 1.1.1, 1.3.0 WMS versions. The WMS-connector will also support Identify and serialise automaticly the "application/vnd.ogc.gml"-format. Events will trigger for all formats so you can pass any format you like. The WMS client has been tested on 243 different WMS servers out in the world. Enjoy!! (MapComponent version 5.3.1)

The already anounced template will finaly come as well. We did not expect this to be so difficult and still are fighting with small bugs. This year we will build advanced applications ourself to this template to improve the robustness. Today you can only hookup to ArcIMS but we will release one where WMS can be used as well. And not only that but you should be able to combine WMS and ArcIMS services...

We introduced a cool new tool called Trax. A much better way to manage these developments. Have a look here! You can report bugs if you have an EIONET account like described inside the source code page.

Where to go

Learn the first steps by looking at this movie.
Examples and find out how it works.
Life applications on the web.
Download the components free of charge and use them anywhere.
Source code and alter them for your own needs.
Versions page to know what has changed since your last download..
WIKI_HELP, change or comment what you find missing and wrong.
Flash and OGC WMS map components
Flash and Scanned images
Use the discussion forum http://groups.google.com/group/flashgis

Current functionality

geoRSS read and display of polygons,lines and points ( Simple version and GML version as described on http://www.georss.org)
geoRSS edit polygons,lines, points and send to the server (GML version using a POST form or XML send)
geoRSS scale dependencies.
WMS view zoomin, zoomout, pan.
WMS identify (NEW from 30/03/07)
ArcIMS (AXL) zoomin, zoomout, pan
ArcIMS (AXL) Indentify
ArcIMS (AXL) Feature retrieval and display.
ArcIMS (AXL) Image number retrieval.
ArcIMS (AXL) rendering and dynamic layers
Legend
Dynamic scalebar.
Status animation
Map scale slider
Save session
Save local
Multiple maps including slave and overview maps.
Multiple map services on one page.
Static images load, zoomin, zoomout, pan
Animated movieclips geo-referenced.
Programatical access to all methods, events and properties.
Mosaic of historical loaded images.
Very small files (Most cases less then 250K)
javascript implementations (Daniele Simoncini)

Daniele Simoncini from Italy build an add-on for the map components that allows you to go to a region or point with javascript. You can download it from the download pages.

Some background information.

Interactive maps on the web are in big demand these days. End of 2005 a big boom of GIS started because of Google, Yahoo producing public map services and viewers. This boom creates already a higher demand from end users of how they expect internet mapping. Server based scripting for mapping services (such as .NET,.ASP) are today seen as not user friendly enough because of the constant page loads and the need to wait for the server after one user action. Every interaction with a map demands a request towards the server. These days there are several good solutions to achieve that. Solutions such as AJAX, JAVA clients and Flash macromedia are the most common these days. They run on the client what makes the user experience much better. I made my choice on Flash because of the following reasons.

The files send to the client are small because they are compressed and compiled.
Designers and developers can work easily on the same project without the need of learning new stuff. Flash has been for years the tool of designers and they feel very comfortable with it. For developers it's a new thing but from our experience you can learn a .NET or JAVA developer in a day how to use the Flash development environment.
You can build component and classes in flash what makes reuse of development very easy.
Flash is the number one in add-on for browsers. 93% of internet users have it installed.
It's platform independent. Linux, Windows, Unix, Macintosh and all major internet browsers can integrate the flash plug in.
Not only platform but also older versions of operating systems makes Flash more accessible then the current java script versions in browsers.
Integrating animation is easy. Flash first creation and most used reason is animation. Mapping and animation in my believe go hand in hand. Something I believe will be more clear in the future.
Flash supports vector information.
Asynchronous data request and simultaneous data requests towards one or many servers.

What is important is that you can develop your clients quickly. Technology changes fast. I learned to look regulary to new developments and AJAX is just one like that.

You have no Flash Macromedia development license?

Don't worry. Macromedia allows you to download flash for 30 days, time enouph to try it out! or. Test your own IMS server using this flash application.

Downloads

Go to the download page. You will find different version to ensure you can go back incase of troubles.