ArcGIS Web Development

[caption width=“150” align=“alignleft”] ArcGIS Web Development[/caption]

I’m writing a book

I’ve been somewhat quiet on this project for the past few months aside from some folks who have been gracious enough to review some of my content and make sure I wasn’t completely off the rails on certain items, but earlier this year I began the task of writing a book on ArcGIS Web Development. It is currently available as a MEAP, from Manning Publications. If you are unfamiliar with MEAP, it is basically an early access program for books in digital form as they are written. The first three chapters are available as well as chapter 1 for free. If you purchase the book and have some feedback, suggestions or have questions for me, you can post them on the Author Online forum for the book when it is up and running.

What’s it about?

The focus of the book is on building web applications using the ArcGIS API for JavaScript. When it comes to pure web development, JavaScript is the natural choice, so the book does not cover Flex or Silverlight, but as I’ll point out in the book, once you know how the core of how the ArcGIS APIs work, you can probably move across development languages without too much issue. So far, chapter 2 covers some core concepts of the JavaScript API and some of the benefits that it provides to developers. Chapter 3 starts to dive a little deeper and even covers building a reusable custom table of contents-legend widget. The plan is, as I work on the book, I will provide some guidance on helping users setup an ArcGIS Online Developers account and build some data for use in a sample application. We’ll build a custom application with the purpose of having this application work on mobile devices. I think this is the part of the book that will interest most people, so I plan on spending quite a bit of time on making sure I cover it in thorough and learnable steps. Since we are working with ArcGIS Online, I’ll be talking about some basic security for the application and also about how that collected information may be used by those interested in an office setting.

Thank you

Working on this project has been completely different from anything else I have done. I usually spend what time I have working on projects for my startup I co-founded (everything is a startup I suppose, I say small company), SmartGeotech and other side projects/work that range from JavaScript & .NET to Android and iOS, plus my 9-to-5 (or 5-to-5 including commute). I can honestly say that writing has been a rewarding challenge for myself. I’ve always been interested in teaching a GIS course somewhere, but my schedule has never left much room for it, and writing a book under the guidance of some experienced and very patient Manning editors has been a real pleasure. In the end, I hope to provide readers of the book with a valuable resource they can use as a strong foundation for future development with the ArcGIS API for JavaScript and more down the road. So thanks.