Microsoft SQL Server Denali Community Technology Preview 1 Spatial Whitepaper
Microsoft’s Ed Katibah has posted a new whitepaper that outlines some of the new spatial features of SQL Server Denali. Quite a bit of amazing new stuff.
SHRUG GIS Workshop 2010
I’ve been in Tallahassee, FL on the campus of Florida State University this week for the 2010 edition of Seven Hills (And here I thought Florida was completely flat, there are at least 7 hills in this state and I jogged up to them in the morning) Regional User Group (SHRUG) GIS Workshop. They were nice enough to invite me to speak during the keynote which I focused on the disruptive nature of GIS. I was also able to sit on a panel that talked about the struggles that local government is dealing with working with the cloud, data sharing, and cost recovery. Some of the SHRUG leadership team was also kind enough to take me on a walking tour of Tallahassee at night through the Kudzu. Fun times, fun times.
There is quite a vibrant GIS community in the Tallahassee area. I had a really good time meeting everyone and look forward to coming back in the future. Now I’m off to Denver for a little WhereCamp 5280 debauchery. I sure hope I packed a jacket!
SHRUG GIS Workshop 2010
I’ve been in Tallahassee, FL on the campus of Florida State University this week for the 2010 edition of Seven Hills (And here I thought Florida was completely flat, there are at least 7 hills in this state and I jogged up to them in the morning) Regional User Group (SHRUG) GIS Workshop. They were nice enough to invite me to speak during the keynote which I focused on the disruptive nature of GIS. I was also able to sit on a panel that talked about the struggles that local government is dealing with working with the cloud, data sharing, and cost recovery. Some of the SHRUG leadership team was also kind enough to take me on a walking tour of Tallahassee at night through the Kudzu. Fun times, fun times.
There is quite a vibrant GIS community in the Tallahassee area. I had a really good time meeting everyone and look forward to coming back in the future. Now I’m off to Denver for a little WhereCamp 5280 debauchery. I sure hope I packed a jacket!
ArcGIS Desktop 10 UI Wackiness
So recently I’ve moved my work from the 9.3.x version of ArcGIS to 10. There are some really great things with 10 that make it much easier to use (I love the basemaps being integrated in to the toolbar. So much easier than going to ArcGIS Online and clicking on the LYR file), but there are some other things that I just have to scratch my head and wonder what they heck were they thinking.
Dissolve is Good Honest GIS Work
I had to create a vector output from a Esri Grid last week and I did the good old Desktop equivalent of GRIDPOLY and got my shapefile. But as you’d expect, there was millions of little polygons from the grid. I did what any sane geogeek would do, grabbed the dissolve tool. A couple clicks later I’m ready to hit the run button and watch ArcGIS struggle to dissolve such a large/complex dataset. But when I clicked the run button, away went the dialog and I assumed the process crashed. So bring of the dissolve again and try it all over again. Yup, away goes the dialog and I have no idea what is going on. I go to force quick quit ArcGIS and I see its churning away on the shapefile. Hmph?
ArcGIS 10 Progress Bar
Back to the ArcGIS Desktop window and what do I see in the lower right hand corner? This bizarre feedback?
I’m sure all the ArcGIS 10 users know that thing pretty darn well. All part of the multi-threading that ArcGIS 10 does. But it is so counterintuitive that I wonder how many times I might have force quit ArcGIS while that thing was moving along.
So What am I Looking at Here?
It’s an interesting design choice for sure. I wonder if they were in a conference room and couldn’t agree if it should be a progress bar or percentage complete feedback. I can only imagine the eureka! moment when they came up with this design choice.
"It's like a progress bar, only better" -- Esri UI Design Specialist
No it could be the most annoying Esri status feedback since that “Cylon eye” thing that ArcView 3.x used to do. I admit, I’m not the youngest rooster in the coop and my eyesight is poor, but I feel like I have to struggle to see what the darn thing is saying. I’m not the only person who feels this way either. I’ve had about 5 emails about this in the past two weeks asking me essentially, “WTF?”.
Neither Here nor There
We all know ArcGIS Desktop 10 is not multi-threaded. Before this hack (Now that might be a strong word, it does work pretty darn well. Let us not kid ourselves though, it is just a bandaid solution until they get true multi-threaded ArcGIS out.), we had that dialog with the progress bar that was usually modal in nature. Click dissolve and then go to YouTube to watch Justin Beiber videos until ArcGIS was done. Now you don’t have to worry about keeping yourself busy while running a geoprocessing task. It does slow down ArcGIS (at least heavy processing), but it is surprisingly workable. But this half-empty solution clearly leads to weird design choices.
No I Don’t Want the Processing Dialog Back
What would work? For me, I like the percent complete feedback over a progress bar. But don’t scroll the darn thing. Just leave it up in the corner where is. If you have to have some sort of indication that something is going on, throw a throbber up there like happens when ArcMap redraws the view. That’s such a more elegant solution than this current one and it won’t make me put my nose on my screen trying to read what the darn thing is saying.
Oh and my dissolve is still running/scrolling along?
ArcGIS Desktop 10 UI Wackiness
So recently I’ve moved my work from the 9.3.x version of ArcGIS to 10. There are some really great things with 10 that make it much easier to use (I love the basemaps being integrated in to the toolbar. So much easier than going to ArcGIS Online and clicking on the LYR file), but there are some other things that I just have to scratch my head and wonder what they heck were they thinking.
Dissolve is Good Honest GIS Work
I had to create a vector output from a Esri Grid last week and I did the good old Desktop equivalent of GRIDPOLY and got my shapefile. But as you’d expect, there was millions of little polygons from the grid. I did what any sane geogeek would do, grabbed the dissolve tool. A couple clicks later I’m ready to hit the run button and watch ArcGIS struggle to dissolve such a large/complex dataset. But when I clicked the run button, away went the dialog and I assumed the process crashed. So bring of the dissolve again and try it all over again. Yup, away goes the dialog and I have no idea what is going on. I go to force quick quit ArcGIS and I see its churning away on the shapefile. Hmph?
ArcGIS 10 Progress Bar
Back to the ArcGIS Desktop window and what do I see in the lower right hand corner? This bizarre feedback?
I’m sure all the ArcGIS 10 users know that thing pretty darn well. All part of the multi-threading that ArcGIS 10 does. But it is so counterintuitive that I wonder how many times I might have force quit ArcGIS while that thing was moving along.
So What am I Looking at Here?
It’s an interesting design choice for sure. I wonder if they were in a conference room and couldn’t agree if it should be a progress bar or percentage complete feedback. I can only imagine the eureka! moment when they came up with this design choice.
"It's like a progress bar, only better" -- Esri UI Design Specialist
No it could be the most annoying Esri status feedback since that “Cylon eye” thing that ArcView 3.x used to do. I admit, I’m not the youngest rooster in the coop and my eyesight is poor, but I feel like I have to struggle to see what the darn thing is saying. I’m not the only person who feels this way either. I’ve had about 5 emails about this in the past two weeks asking me essentially, “WTF?”.
Neither Here nor There
We all know ArcGIS Desktop 10 is not multi-threaded. Before this hack (Now that might be a strong word, it does work pretty darn well. Let us not kid ourselves though, it is just a bandaid solution until they get true multi-threaded ArcGIS out.), we had that dialog with the progress bar that was usually modal in nature. Click dissolve and then go to YouTube to watch Justin Beiber videos until ArcGIS was done. Now you don’t have to worry about keeping yourself busy while running a geoprocessing task. It does slow down ArcGIS (at least heavy processing), but it is surprisingly workable. But this half-empty solution clearly leads to weird design choices.
No I Don’t Want the Processing Dialog Back
What would work? For me, I like the percent complete feedback over a progress bar. But don’t scroll the darn thing. Just leave it up in the corner where is. If you have to have some sort of indication that something is going on, throw a throbber up there like happens when ArcMap redraws the view. That’s such a more elegant solution than this current one and it won’t make me put my nose on my screen trying to read what the darn thing is saying.
Oh and my dissolve is still running/scrolling along?
ArcGIS 10 Service Pack 1
That fun time we all wait for with releases, the Esri Service Pack. ArcGIS 10 SP1 is out and available for those who want to be cutting edge. The long list of what is fixed is here (but we all know you aren’t reading that and you’ll install anyway). Plus how many ArcIMS service packs will you ever be able to download in the future?