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ArcGIS Viewer for Flex 2.0 Available

Configurable widgets provide functionality to ArcGIS Viewer for Flex.

Esri's newest Web client viewer, ArcGIS Viewer for Flex 2.0, can now be downloaded at no cost from the ArcGIS Viewer for Flex Resource Center.

ArcGIS Viewer for Flex is a ready-to-use, configurable Web mapping application. It enables organizations to quickly and easily deploy a Web mapping application with minimal effort.

The application is designed to support existing business workflows that need mapping visualization, editing, and analysis on the Web. The look and feel, functionality, and data content of the viewer can be customized by editing an XML configuration file. Organizations can add their own corporate logo and branding to the viewer, extend functionality by adding widgets, and set up the viewer to work with their own GIS services. ArcGIS Viewer for Flex includes more than a dozen core widgets that extend its functionality. No programming skills are required to configure the viewer.

"ArcGIS Viewer for Flex allows nondevelopers to set up and deploy a fast, modern-looking Web mapping application very quickly," says Derek Law, product manager for the viewer. "Mapping content from ArcGIS Online is already preloaded in the application, including worldwide street, imagery, and topographic maps, as well as a set of sample ArcGIS Server map services and several widgets."

GIS professionals with access to ArcGIS Server will find that ArcGIS Viewer for Flex is a great prototyping tool for demonstrating proposed Web mapping solutions. They can also use it to quickly stand up internal and public-facing Web mapping applications for their organization. This makes the viewer an ideal out-of-the-box product solution for quickly creating Web client applications for ArcGIS Server. Example application use cases include an organization's operational mapping viewer, management dashboards, and emergency response mapping scenarios.

Adding and removing widgets allow users to customize the functionality of the viewer in a modular fashion. Widgets that are included with the viewer provide a range of functionality, including

• Displaying basemaps through ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Server services
• Finding addresses and place-names through ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Server services
• Creating new map features and editing existing map features using ArcGIS Server feature services
• Clipping and extracting map features and saving them locally in different formats
• Drawing simple graphics on the map display
• Performing GIS analysis
• Performing simple printing

Application developers interested in exploiting the ArcGIS Viewer for Flex framework can download the application source code and use Flash Builder 4 or the integrated development environment of their choice to develop more customized Web mapping applications by creating their own widgets and/or extending the core viewer framework.

The ArcGIS Viewer for Flex Resource Center (www.esri.com/viewerforflexRC) hosts online sample viewer applications showing different configuration possibilities along with interactive previews of each of the widgets. The resource center also offers online help documentation, samples, and a forum where users can discuss the viewer.

More Information

For more information, visit www.esri.com/viewerforflexRC.