Tough Weekend of ArcWeb Explorer Beta
January 29, 2006 2 Comments
The reviews are in and most seem to think that ArcWeb Explorer isn’t up to the task. Adena started off with a pretty light review, but that was about the best ArcWeb Explorer could hope for. Jithen brought up the speed and GUI issues (that most everyone noted) as well as it having trouble displaying tiles as you panned or re-sized the browser window. I have to admit, the demo I saw before had much smoother panning that this beta version does. I can only assume that this is a result of many people using it. The navigation does seem backwards to what most web mapping applications do (My preference is to use the mouse wheel for zoom and the left click for pan). I had some problems with Flash 7 on some other browsers I don’t use as much and didn’t tell me to upgrade (Yahoo Maps did this too so its not just ESRI’s problem). I also spend WAY too much time trying to figure out if there was anything exposed from the API, but I came up empty.
Anyway, the verdict is mixed, but since this is a beta we’ll be able to help ESRI figure it out. I’m more interested in the API and seeing what people can do with the Public Services and ArcWeb Explorer. ArcWeb Explorer isn’t a competitor for Google/Yahoo!/Microsoft, but a front end to ArcWeb Services. We got to keep that in mind, but if it isn’t at least an equal to their web mapping services, people will look elsewhere.
About James Fee
Hey, now…. though you cite my blog entry, I didn’t completely pan the beta- actually I’m thinking (or perhaps optimistically hoping) that what we are seeing is the tip of the iceberg of what’s in the works at ESRI. To me it seems like the ESRI development team is putting all of the pieces of infrastructure in place to make all of our current wishlist items fall into place, and that’s exciting to me. However it does still raise a question of performance and scalability… maybe a minor tweak, or maybe a more serious issue?
Sure its a beta, but its still pretty bad. I hope they fix the issues with the GUI before saying this is their front end. You’d think they would learn from Google or Yahoo as theirs isn’t the first front end on the market. Heck you’d think they would learn from themselves. *shrug*