As ArcGIS Online sees continuous development and growth towards more formalized acceptance among more code-dependent government, business, and educational departments. It’s a way to allow convenient data sharing, while still maintaining the ability to extract that data and transform it into engaging, customized content through the avenues of mapping applications and story maps.
As can be seen from the maps submitted to Esri’s annual Story Map contest, many use ArcGIS Online to showcase data they want to be seen by a generalized audience. Most developers are looking for a way to reach the user, to get them to interact with their data, understand it, and in some cases utilize it in their daily lives. This is most prevalent in the increasing usage of Esri products to create maps related to transportation. As of now, some of Esri’s application templates do format themselves to work with mobile devices, given that a user is working with the appropriate templates to do so. But programmers who are interested in bringing back their creative, coding flair to these projects may find a way to do so through working with ArcGIS Online in tandem with Android Studio.
Android Studio is an open source, downloadable program for those that want to design Android device and Google Play compatible applications with relative ease. Those looking for a convenient way to package their public maps into applications for their users can work with more simplistic methods to place their public map URLs into an application for easy download, with step by step instructions on how to use these basic features on their website.
Working with online maps in tandem with applications can make your Open Data more accessible. It allows developers to make their data more easily consumable by most public users, while still allowing them to maintain the useful metadata, organizational tools, and cross-user data sharing that ArcGIS Online allows.
View the latest ArcGIS Runtime SDK for Android release notes here.
