Sergent Solutions Blog

Just The Basics

2011-05-31T09:32:00.001-05:00

If you read the post that leads into this For Your Career, Start Here, you should now be a member of my online group on LinkedIn. If not, go check it out, and then come back here when you are done.

This post will start you in helping set up your environment for development.

Well that guy just above is enthusiastic about getting started, but if we don't get organized first, we will all have a tough time following along.

Let's begin. The first tool I want to share with you is a tool called dropbox. You won't need it for what I am about to share, but you might want it for your own personal use. If you want to get involved or actively participate, you will need to do just a couple of things so that we can collaborate. In the following screen recording, I will tell you about what those steps are. So, take a look at the video, get connected and then I will take you on a tour.

Now, that we have access to dropbox, we can get to some files that we will be using for development.

Don't worry if you are waiting for code. We are setting up a solid foundation for sharing with one another. Get ready to share and find out in my next post: Why We Share.

For Your Career, Start Here

2011-05-03T01:45:00.001-05:00

Join the Web Dev Network

As a developer, I have seen so many new developers come to my field. And what is the first question they usually ask? Where do I begin? There are two things I can guarantee. The first is that nobody will agree about the right place to start. The second is that many may tell you, that I’m not the best person to ask.

I beg to differ right here and now. I am the best person to ask. Why? Because, right now, I am more like you than anyone else that can provide you with direction. I have not made it big. Simply put, I don’t have a success story. But that’s just it. When you are starting out, you are not expected to have a success story. You are expected to learn. If I know so much, why don’t I have a success story? I don’t know if I should say that it is a simple or complex reason, but I will tell you what I think.

First, I started late in the game. I have only programmed since about 1999. And some professionals will tell you that I have not been doing it that long, because I am including Microsoft Access Visual Basic for Applications. More on that some other time.

I am not going to go into the details. That will suffice for now. There is one thing that you want to achieve starting, and I have that. You want to obtain employment in GIS programming. You don’t have to be top dog as soon as you start programming, but you do need to know where the pack is.

Finding your path to learn and is what I will help you do. I have had to hunt for knowledge for years, and now I want to show you how you can get around any barrier that may prevent you from learning. With me; you will have the chance to learn, but if you want to move ahead of your peers, you should contribute and participate.

So, you may have a B.A. in Psychology. And maybe you won't win the Grand Prize for beta testing GIS software and get published in ESRI's International Publication, ArcUser. But those were my qualifications, and that is exactly what I did. I want to share with you how you can achieve your goals through knowledge even if you don't have what others would consider to be qualifications.

Here is your first task to become a professional programmer in web, mobile or GIS; join my group on LinkedIn called the Web Dev Network and get used to hearing; “I’ll talk to you soon.”

Want To See And Hear From Me Now?

ESRI has been hosting something called Dev Meet Ups all over the United States. We had one in Decatur, Illinois and another in Champaign, Illinois on the first night of the 2011 Spring ILGISA conference. Developers were in for a treat as Joe Stagner of Microsoft, also know as the MisfitGeek who you can follow on Twitter worked with Jim Barry of ESRI, to put together the first ever Dev Meet Up Remote Keynote through Skype. Joe presented jQuery integration with Visual Studio 2010. All attendees were able to enjoy live Q & A with Joe. And to tweet about the Meet Up to keep everybody up to date about the events, we had an enthusiastic Amy Niessen of ESRI, also in attendance working at the Champaign Meet Up. Eventually everyone wants to see fly over country first hand.

Now, I would like the developer community to consider having something that I call a Meet Up Mashup. Maybe you are tired of reading. Let me explain...

Kickoff! And It's Not The Super Bowl

2011-02-06T17:48:00.001-06:00

I just wanted to share with my visitors that what appears to be limited site activity; is just an appearance to be limited activity. I hope you are ready. But it does not matter if you are not. You can even be confused as that will be ideal, because what you need is clarity.

Professional Programmers Should Provide Clarity

Learning about computers should not be difficult.

In my next post, I will share you the bare bones of web development.

We are going for the how to approach. And what I am going to share with you, many other professionals, companies and support for books you buy, will not.

Here is what others are concerned about that I am not:

Job Security - what I share will be the best of what I know, but will be nothing compared to what I will know. I focus on constant improvement and believe sharing among professionals is valuable for all.
Making Money Doing This - money can be good, but my focus is on quality first. If you like what you read and it helps you, please donate to my paypal account. The money will be used to invest in the development community so as I grow, you can too.
Making my blog the center of the universe - If you have something valuable to share, I would rather share it that re-write it.

A few paragraphs and three dot points aren't enough to tell you about what I want to share with you, so follow along for a little while. I don't expect your trust until I earn it.

So, I ask that you give me a chance to prove that my focus is on you, for one reason.

I think it's time for people to be treated like people by providing the personal touch. I have a budget of $0.00, no staff, and extremely limited resources. Luckily, that's enough.

All of this is free. But, there is a catch. I want you to get involved, so I can grow and you can too.

Talk to you soon.

Chris

Knowledge Sharing

2010-12-02T09:54:00.000-06:00

I am getting some rest right now battling a sinus infection, but there are others hard at work, so let me share with you, because it doesn't have to come from me. And this may be the shortest blog post, but still offering up a great deal of content. Check out Chris Bogan's List of Interesting Blogs. You can find out more of what Chris has to say on twitter at http://twitter.com/chrisbrogan.

I can share more with you if you enjoy content of online professionals that are not part of the social network, but in a more work related area of which I call the professional network or #ProNetwork as I call it on twitter.

What do you think?

Video Games for Christmas - Buy Them Or Build Them and a Few Gadgets

2010-11-29T22:28:00.000-06:00

I am a GIS web programmer and today I am taking a break. I went virtual Christmas shopping for fun. If you don't like video games and you have someone that likes video games on your list, Christmas shopping can be a nightmare, especially if you look at all the items for sale; a blank look comes across your face and you suddenly feel light headed. Well, I hope what I have to share will ease your shopping pain. If you get lost, just ask a question in the comments and I will help you out. This is one item on your list I will help you out with.

For My GIS Friends, Conference Attendees, and My Sanity

Lately, I have been on the go with no breaks and tech talk; let me break away from that by adding some ridiculously priced products which is part of my personality where I enjoy taking what I do light no matter how complex.

If you ever said you wanted to give tanks(you should check out the reviews on this); now you can. I have also added a Segway and a trailor(really?!), yes really. I call it an i-Haul. If you have to present at the User Conference or any place you have to get around quite a bit. It might be ideal.

Don't Need To Be Mobile, But Need Mobile Capabilities?

At any event, you want to be able to communicate. And if you are a developer like me; if your mobile tool of choice doesn't have what you need, you may want to program it. Here are some options for you in one spot.

Motion Sensing XBox 360 Got You Froze - Here is What I Thaw Right Down To The Batteries

Maybe Your Shopping List Is A Wii Different; Let Mii Take Care Of You

Video Games And Consoles Making You A Grinch? Get These Items And It Could Ease That Financial Pinch

Merry Christmas! I wish I could share more, but all I want for Christmas is a screen door.
To make this wish come true; it will depend on purchases by you. And I will be watching. :-)

Chris

Write XML in MS Access 2010 Using VBA

2010-11-27T15:33:00.002-06:00

There is an XML theme for everything that I am writing and this post is no different, except this time, I want to meet you, so I am going to give you the opportunity to meet me. While you're waiting, you can try a game below or just wait for my twitter/LinkedIn notifcation. You can go right to my twitter page by clicking on my name right below the sympathy donation button.

Instead of a cartoon before the show, I will use video games. The channel that I will be broadcasting on is just below the games.

webdevnetwork on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Preparing to go live now.

Create XML in VBA

'Author: Chris Sergent

'Date Created: November 27, 2010

'Purpose: To provide a basic example on how to create an XML document with VBA in MS Access.

Private Sub btnCreateXml_Click()

'Open the vbSkeleton.xml document if it exists and replace all contents. If

'the file does not exsist create it.

Open "c:\Templates\vbaSkeleton.xml" For Output As 1

'Declares the document as an XML document. This element is required at the top of the XML document.

'The declaration is required and must go at the top and only needs to be referenced at the top of the

'document. After the root element, XML documents require beginning and ending elements.

'That is to say that if we have an element or a tag such as , it must have a corresponding

'tag of even if there is no content.

Print #1, "

Print #1, ""

Print #1, ""

'An XML document requires one and only one root or parent node is allowed and it must be empty.

'spatialDeveloperKnowledge is our parent node.

Print #1, ""

'Although this is like a parent node, you could add an attribute to the Developer node such as id.

'I don't recommend it. We'll use XPATH to navigate the XML DOM in later examples.

'There are no rules for this data, but that will be taken care of in a future XSD example.

Print #1, vbTab & ""

Print #1, vbTab & ""

'Set the focus on the txtFirstName control to obtain information for writing

txtFirstName.SetFocus

Print #1, vbTab & vbTab & "" & Me.txtFirstName.Text & ""

'Set the focus on the txtLastName control to obtain information for writing

txtLastName.SetFocus

Print #1, vbTab & vbTab & "" & Me.txtLastName.Text & " "

'Set the focus on the txtCity control to write the city data to file

txtCity.SetFocus

Print #1, vbTab & vbTab & ""

Print #1, vbTab & vbTab & "" & Me.txtCity.Text & " "

'Set the focus on the txtState control to write the name of the state

txtState.SetFocus

Print #1, vbTab & vbTab & "" & Me.txtState.Text & " "

'Set the focus on the txtCountry control to write out the name of the country

txtCountry.SetFocus

Print #1, vbTab & vbTab & "" & Me.txtCountry.Text & " "

Print #1, vbTab & vbTab & ""

'Set the focus on txtX1 to obtain the X coordinate

txtX1.SetFocus

Print #1, vbTab & vbTab & "" & Me.txtX1.Text & ""

'Set the focus on txtY1 to obtain the Y coordinate

txtY1.SetFocus

Print #1, vbTab & vbTab & "" & Me.txtY1.Text & ""

'Add measuring value

Print #1, vbTab & vbTab & ""

Print #1, vbTab & vbTab & "NA"

'Add elevation coordinate

Print #1, vbTab & vbTab & ""

Print #1, vbTab & vbTab & "0"

'Set the focus on the txtSkills control to write out the list of skills the developer has

txtSkills.SetFocus

'I added this with an array of skills, because I want to see, not just a developer meetup;

'but a meetup mashup. A developer that limits their access to knowledge, limits their potential

'to provide a solutions and skill dilutes the potential skills in creativity and problem solving.

'Even for the most skilled, a novice can still teach the elite in our field how to communicate with a

'novice. Knowing how to apply what you have learned is not as important as being able to enable others

'with the knowledge and the ability to apply it without help.

Print #1, vbTab & vbTab & "" & Me.txtSkills.Text & " "

Print #1, vbTab & ""

Print #1, ""

'Closes file. If you don't do this, you might receive a message that this file is in use. Don't leave it out.

'If you open a file in code; close a file in code. The same thing holds true with database connections.

Close #1

'This displays once the click event completes. There is no error checking for this example

'If you receceive an error and, ensure you have a folder named Templates in your root folder or "C:\" drive

'or modify the code to so that there is a folder to write to

MsgBox "vbaSkeleton.xml file has been created.", vbOKOnly, "File Written"

End Sub

Sample of the Output Document

Sample of a Resume with Inline CSS

ESRI Print to PDF Task Sample for ArcGIS Server 9.3.1 - Part of the Thanksgiving Code Buffet

2010-11-24T22:26:00.004-06:00

]If you have been following along, then you know this weekend I am hosting a Thanksgiving code buffet. Perhaps you don't want to miss out on these knowledge dishes when they are fresh because you have to shop. Don't worry, I posted Black Friday Specials and gift cards right here for you. And I had to shop around for ones that I thought you may like. But, if you don't want anything to do with that online shopping stuff; I took care of that too. Content is at the very top, bottom and on the sides. There are a few gadgets I will share with you in my posts. They are expensive, so I don't expect you to buy them, but if you do; I hope you share. We can jsut have fun talking about them.

Now for the other PrintTask for the Web ADF. I have referred to this as the main course; it is our turkey. But, I will do the best I can to make it tasty.

I read this post http://www.arcgisserverblog.com/2008/12/print-map-with-arcgis-server.html and decided to do the same thing that I do when I buy a new pc; take it apart and change it. In this example, we are going to export the image of the map, obtain the name of the new image file and then perform a page redirect from there just like in the ESRI JSAPI 2.1 Print to PDF example.

The screen print I planned to share with you is not available right now, but I do have a screen print of the MapResourceManager. With the main course like this, what does that say about my side dishes?

To define your map, we don't use the REST API in this example, so set you MapResource Manager as displayed in the image below.

It is the same resource. We are just not using the REST API in this one. Now for the one thing that separates these two examples; the code.

The following is plain text, but this way you can copy it for your own application. You do need a license for ESRI ArcGIS Server to use this code. Nothing to worry about; there will be plenty of other map examples that will cost you nothing to use. But if you are unable to move away from the Web ADF right now, then this you may find this code helpful for two reasons. The first is that you will be able print to pdf and the second is that the page that you redirect to, that creates the pdf is the exact same page. So, you can migrate this PrintTask to the JSAPI 2.1 if that is your API of choice. If not, you may be interested in another such as Silverlight or Flex. We aren't serving those this weekend. But if you want to bring a code plate and serve one of those up, let me know. I will link to it as this will free up time for me to share additional code sooner.

Here is your export function for exporting your image:

Public Shared Function ExportMapImage(ByVal ADFMap As ESRI.ArcGIS.ADF.Web.UI.WebControls.Map, ByVal OutputPath As String) As String

Dim bitmaps As New System.Collections.Generic.List(Of System.Drawing.Image)()

For Each mf As ESRI.ArcGIS.ADF.Web.DataSources.IMapFunctionality In ADFMap.GetFunctionalities()

If mf IsNot Nothing Then

Dim mapImage As ESRI.ArcGIS.ADF.Web.MapImage = mf.DrawExtent(ADFMap.Extent)

mapImage = mf.DrawExtent(ADFMap.Extent)

If mapImage Is Nothing Then

Continue For

End If

If mapImage.GetImage() IsNot Nothing Then

bitmaps.Add(mapImage.GetImage())

End If

End If

Next

Dim newImg As New System.Drawing.Bitmap(Convert.ToInt16(ADFMap.Width.Value), Convert.ToInt16(ADFMap.Height.Value))

Dim imgGraphics As System.Drawing.Graphics = System.Drawing.Graphics.FromImage(newImg)

Dim i As Integer = bitmaps.Count - 1

While i >= 0

imgGraphics.DrawImage(bitmaps(i), 0, 0, Convert.ToInt16(ADFMap.Width.Value), Convert.ToInt16(ADFMap.Height.Value))

i += -1

End While

Dim Ticks As Long = DateTime.Now.Ticks

Dim ImagePath As String = OutputPath & "mapimage" & Ticks & ".png"

newImg.Save(ImagePath, System.Drawing.Imaging.ImageFormat.Png)

Return "mapimage" & Ticks & ".png"

End Function

Once you export your image, you need call the above function. We are going to use a button click event.

Protected Sub btnPrintMap_Click(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles btnPrintMap.Click

'The following is how you should write out the path variables

'TextBox1.Text = "http://YourWebSite/Images/" & ExportMapImage(Map1, "http:///YourWebSite/Images/").ToString

Response.Redirect("PrintTaskResults.aspx?sender=" + TextBox1.Text.ToString)

End Sub

Although we are redirecting to another page, the embedded pdf page has something that you did not see in the last in the JSAPI 2.1. An image is created, but once the pdf is created, we have the code delete the image. So, here is the Page_Load event.

In this line we create our pdf and add the image.

Since the image has been used for the pdf and it does not contain a unique name, we don't want our Images folder to constantly grow, so we check to see the image file used in the pdf still exists. If it does, it is deleted. In this way we have automated the clean up of our Images folder.

That concludes this sample, so now feel free to download the Print to PDF in ESRI ArcGIS Server 9.3.1 using the Web ADF in .NET now.

ESRI Web ADF Print Task - Up Next; It's About The Turkey

2010-11-23T15:28:00.064-06:00

With the ESRI Web ADF on it's way out the door, I plan on posting a PrintTask just like the one I did for the JSAPI 2.1. So bookmark this page or get notified through RSS.

If you are looking forward to the XML, there is no reason to worry. I have already tested most of the PrintTask for the Web ADF. I am planning to do one for Silverlight and YahooMaps as well. They will be next.

Thanksgiving is coming up and so is Black Friday. If you are not from the US and possibly don't know what I mean. This Thursday Americans eat outside of their means and the next day we spend outside of our means. I am only kidding, but shopping the day after Thanksgiving can be quite wild.

But on Thanksgiving, it's a buffet of food. And for the code hungry, I am going to post a code buffet. Since it's a buffet, your food for thought will not be in one programming language. I plan on feeding you some basic knowledge for commenting syntax and structure. Here's the knowledge menu.

Now the Web ADF has been a thorn in my side in programming right at the start. I thought it was me, but ESRI is dropping the Web ADF.

For our main course and the knowledge turkey will be the ESRI Web ADF Print Task. It will be just like the PrintTask I wrote about for the ESRI JSAPI 2.1.

Now with our main course out of the way. We are going to lay out the table with a full spread of XML writing through code. Each will result in the exact same XML file, but will be processed differently. and the dishes are;

- VBA in MS Access topped with a GUI
- VBScript served plain
- HTA stuffed with VBScript
- Perl served plain
- Visual Basic.NET and C# topped with a GUI and peppered with parameters for input
- Python sauteed with silly comments providing we have a wind blowing in a direction that is not opposite of the direction we had hoped for, unless it is a Tuesday or are making a left turn (if you're not familiar with it, Python related to Monty Python; so humor or an attempt at it is encouraged)
- Java caffeine free
- Sybase PowerScript for PowerBuilder but the GUI has been filleted

and for dessert, a dynamic web based resume presented with a splash of CSS topped with a Twitter and LinkedIn widget

XML appetizers will be provided before, during and after the knowledge feast.

And if you are worried about missing all of this free code and missing Black Friday specials, I will share specials with you too. But if you must shop, by all means shop. But if you are riveted to the spot enjoying one code course after another, I will do my best to share some things right here with you. I have also been having fun with these Amazon ads because, guess what; they are widgets. And I think web gadgets are pretty cool. Yes, I like that word.

I look forward to sharing with you. If you would like to bring a knowledge plat of your own, please feel free to cook some code up and share it with us.

So, Happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy.

Functional Code is Nice, But Nice Code is Better

2010-11-23T02:38:00.000-06:00

The ability to print my map to pdf in ESRI ArcGIS Server is something I have wanted for a while. There are several examples available on ESRI's website from ESRI and others developers have shared their examples as well. But I haven't found the print examples easy to follow or to apply. So I made one "Chris" simple. Feel free to read about my PrintTask if you haven't. It uses iTextSharp, but one thing I did not mention is that you can use the same code to print any image that iTextSharp supports and everything I did can be done at no cost to you. Having a job in GIS isn't even required.

Now for the topic at hand; clean code. I thought it was more important for my fellow developers to have the knowledge of how to print a map to pdf. If I were in their shoes, I would not want to wait to learn the functionality that could be added to my application, so I did not want you to have to wait either.

And now you have a PrintTask in which you can integrate into your ESRI ArcGIS Server applications using the JavaScript API 2.1. However, if you know how to export the map in Flex or Silverlight, you can apply this same example in those API's as well as the page that displays the pdf uses no GIS API's of any kind; it just references the location of the image.

But why am I still talking about the PrintTask? I did not separate presentation, functionality and content. If you are not familiar with this, you are not alone. Now you need to know, I am not "the authority" on website design, but I do the best I can to apply what I learn from other professionals and programming books.

I listed three books that I have bought below from SitePoint. They are easy to read books and a good starting point. You can check your local library first. The first one I mention is quite possibly available there and the best one of the three. Build Your Own Website the Right Way will help with basic CSS, but I would skip the chapter on HTML forms. I did. I want to build .NET pages, so HTML forms is not an area I was too concerned about. Concepts of this book are applied to my examples, but where the book takes you on a learning tour of creating well-formed websites with HTML; I will extend the information and show you how to apply those same well-formed techniques in .NET. That's not in the book. Simply JavaScript is a lot to take in, but it does drive home the importance of separation of content, display and functionality. jQuery is there because I just like it. However, if you don't want or need a book, don't worry. I plan on taking you through the steps that these books use and plan on showing you how to take that information further, by integrating the topics with .NET, JavaScript Framework, and mapping API's. But, you do need to be aware that I will be starting with .NET, not HTML. It will be easier than you think, just follow along and if you get lost, just speak up and I will give you directions.

Before sharing how to build a well-formed site template, I want to share with you some basics that I think are important, commenting and documenting your work by showing you how to write code that creates an XML file for you.

If you want to become more involved with the developer community collaborating, live, online and even in person, I would like to invite you to join the Web Dev Network on LinkedIn. Just click the link below and request to join. If you do not already have a LinkedIn account, you will need to create it first. But it's free and we have live online meetings. There is no video yet, but you can talk, watch, and even present.

Join

ESRI Print Task Sample for the JSAPI 2.1

2010-11-13T16:39:00.007-06:00

I failed at giving myself deadlines, so I thought I would challenge myself. There are examples of creating a PrintTask, but they seem to be hard to follow, at least for me. If you have found this to be the case, then this utility and post is for you. This example will be very basic as will show you how to print a map to pdf using the ESRI ArcGIS Server JSAPI 2.1; but just the map. To simplify the code, I have not included code to format the pdf itself. This is a how to, because any solution is better than no solution when a solution is needed. There are only two blocks of code in the entire application; one block in JavaScript and one in VB.NET so don't let the details of this post overwhelm you.

Well I just finished writing the PrintTask for the ESRI ArcGIS Server JSAPI 2.1. It took me 45 minutes to build the site from scratch. Unfortunately, I missed a parameter that I was passing and it slowed down my development time. It then took me the additional time to write this blog, not to mention adding the images manually after writing the blog in MS Word. But now the blog and the utility are ready.

I used ESRI's web service in the REST API at http://sampleserver1.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/Demographics/ESRI_Population_World/MapServer which displays below in the exportMap.aspx. Yes, a .NET page using the JSAPI.

What happened? We used the .NET control and had it run some JavaScript on the ClientClick event and then passed the variable to a label .NET control. If you have had problems in the past with using .NET controls with the ESRI JSAPI, you may need to lay out the button like the following image.

With that in place, we can click on our .NET button with worrying about the page refreshing. Be careful! Not including the ContentTemplate tag within the UpdatePanel and surrounding the Button will make your application crash. I have been there a few times.
So, we click our button and then just for you information, a JavaScript message comes up. Everything is going smooth so far if you see this.

A new browser window opens, but before we look at that. Check out what displayed on our page of the world right above the Print Map button. Where did that come from?

Before we can print the image, we need to use the export function. You can read more about exportImage in ESRI online documentation at http://resources.esri.com/help/9.3/arcgisserver/apis/rest/index.html?export.html.
But, what about the code? If you have a hard time following it, let me take you through it.
Remember our .NET control? Take a look below and you will see that the OnClientClick event calls up our JavaScript that resides at the top of the page. The function we call is exportimg();

Before we even called that function, there were a few things handled behind the scenes.
We first put in a block of code telling our application that we want to use the ESRI ArcGIS Server JavaScript API 2.1.

Next, we start a new script block and tell our application we will be using esri's dojo tools. Now the question to ask ourselves, even before writing code is; what do we want? The application wants to know the same thing. Just like a restaurant, you place your order and what you requested is prepared for you. With this information in hand, let's place our order. We need three things total and that is it. At our sit down web service, the application uses parameters, the variables that will be used to plug into our code to make it work. It's just like, if you don't order steak, you don't get steak. So, if you don't ask for a map, you won't get a map. To do this we add three declarations.

The first is our web service, displayed as dynamicMapServiceLayer. The second is the variable params which we need for the purpose of defining the output of our map image that we export. The final variable is the printMapURL. Remember the old saying about the most important thing is "location, location, location". This holds true for the printMapURL. It serves one purpose. When the map is exported, it will tell you where it went. And we need that for our PrintTask. Below is the entire script block. Don't worry, we will go through it, but take a look at the line function init() and right at the bottom of the script where you see dojo.addOnLoad(init); dojo.addOnLoad(init); will run as it does not reside in a function. Time to load the code; we define our map in the first line. In the next line, here is one of our three parameters; params. Here it defines the dpi or dots per inch for printing, the width and height of the map and the format to be exported. Define the web service in the dynamicMapServiceLayer and then add it to the map with map.addLayer. Everything is ready to enable exporting our map. We haven't talked about the printMapURL. Do I really need to say; but wait there's more? Jump down below the next block of code and keep reading.

There was a lot to talk about once we clicked that button, but I wanted you to know how everything got wired so this next piece would make more sense.
Now that we have clicked the button to call the exportimg function, it's nice to have information for our variables as we use them immediately.
The exportimg function uses the parameters that we already have and then we use the expmapimagfunc(mapimg) function to return our third variable. The printMapURL.

We use the getElementById and then set the lblMapLocation text to the URL and the image file that was exported. And finally we open the CreatePdf.aspx and append the printMapURL as a variable to pass into our new browser window. From here we leave JavaScript and move to VB.NET. Now if you want the project written in C#; you can use a free converter to do so at Developer Fusion.

Our code runs and our new browser window opens and there you have it; a pdf embedded in our web page. And we are finally at that awkward question; where do embedded pdf's come from? That's not a pdf down below, but it plays a real one on print sample site I will be sharing with you.

Our web page has already defined a pdf in this line of code below. You can use it if you just want to embed a pdf; no printing required. It just references our pdf in the pdfs folder named "Image.pdf".

But that did not create the pdf. I used a tool called iTextSharp which you can download. Many examples are written in C#, so converted C# code to VB.NET. If you have would like a C# example, just ask. Or if you have try to create a C# example and have problems, just post your question about it too.

In our Page_Load event, we define the location of the pdfs folder and variable that we want to use to print our pdf. We first defined the URL of the image as printMapURL. Once we had the value, we assigned it to sender. At the top of our web page is where that image went to.
You will notice that within the address bar after the current web page, sender was added it was set to the value of the location of the image and the image itself.
CreatePdf.aspx?sender=http://sampleserver1b.arcgisonline.com/arcgisoutput/_ags_map687a6f058c52422f9503a216b51da659.png
Finally, we create a new document and then attempt to write our our pdf in the PdWriter by creating a pdf in the pdfs folder named "Image.pdf" . Our pdf is created, but there is no image yet, so we open the new document to write on it or is this case, to add the image. To do that we look at the sender value, which is the URL of our map image; and then we add it to the pdf. Once it is written, we close the pdf and then for informational purposes only, I add the text PDF has been created. You do not need this.
And there you have it, the PrintTask for the ESRI JavaScript API 2.1 using Visual Basic .NET and the .NET Framework 4.0. Try this tool out and tell me what you think. I will be integrating, but for now; I wanted to keep it simple.
Or share a tool or make this one better.

And here is the PrintTask for the ESRI JSAPI 2.1 written in both VB.NET and C# - http://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=56bc091f27134b6b9296db9ad52261a9

Other GIS Resources

For a few other examples of GIS pages in .NET, you can take a look at samples of just basic .NET Framework 3.5 maps that I created with no feature as of yet in the following API's: Microsoft Bing version 6.3,Yahoo AJAX version 3, and Google version 3. An example of Google maps in the previous version 2 as just basic html pages are at: http://sergentsolutions.net/maps.html which includes images from Flickr, an example on how GeoRSS can be applied and another at http://sergentsolutions.net/maps/testmap.html which provides you with an example on how to create tabbed balloons like below. That's all I have to share for now. What would you like to share? Your feedback is important to me. Talk to you soon.

Chris

GeoBloggers Posts You May Like

Book Review: OpenStreetMap - Be Your Own Cartographer

Web Dev Network Growth, XML and Road to GeoRSS

2010-09-27T11:03:00.009-05:00

Join

The Web Dev Network is growing fast. I created this group on July 1, 2010 and we have members on six continents in eight countries. The Web Dev Network's most recent online meeting's topic was about XML. I am starting a companion post to the last meeting which will lead up to October's meeting about GeoRSS. The companion post will be a re-cap of the online meeting that we had on September 24, 2010.

First we are goinng to start with a very basic block of XML. This block of XML code has three items that make it so that it does have some value.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<rootElement>
<docElement>Add your content here.</docElement>
</rootElement>

The first line is the XML declaration. It is the first required piece of a well-formed XML document. The second line displays a tag named rootElement. This is the root element of the XML document. All XML documents must have a root element. The root element is basically a container for the rest of your document. The third line is a child element. The child element is where your content of your XML document will. That's if for this now. We will build extend this example in my next post as we continue to build our way to GeoRSS.

Now, as I said, here is a basic example to automate the creation of this document using HTA for a graphical user interface and VBScript.

All you have to do is copy the code into a text editor and save the file as createXml.hta.
Now, if you are not sure how to do this, please comment. My postings will be geared to providing working code and I won't provide step by step instructions, but if the need is there I can back up and help out.

Copy on next line:

<!DOCTYPE html Public "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">

<head>




        <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" />

        <title>HTA XML Skeleton Creator</title>


<HTA:APPLICATION>
        
        APPLICATIONNAME="Resume Creator"
        SCROLL="yes"
        SINGLEINSTANCE="yes"
        WINDOWSTATE="maximize"

        
        Border = "thick" 
        Caption = "yes"
        MaximizeButton = "yes"
        MinimizeButton = "yes"
        ShowInTaskbar = "yes"
        SysMenu = "yes"

</HTA:APPLICATION>

    </head>


    <script language="VBScript">
'************************************************************************************
'*
'* Script Name:    Scripts are Object Oriented and are named in each sub.
'* Author:         Chris Sergent
'* Created:        11/8/2007
'* Description:    This script is a starter template for writing scripts in HTA.
'*                As usual, I have added information that appears to be found
'*                frequently in various authored scripts eliminating the need to
'*                re-type this.
'*
'************************************************************************************
'*                    DOCUMENTATION
'*
'* Any script changes will be documented here with date, change and author.
'*
'*    1/23/2009
'*    This script now generates a complete web page with head, title, meta, paragraph,
'*     and body elements.
'*
'************************************************************************************
'* Initialization Section
'************************************************************************************
    Option Explicit
'************************************************************************************
'* Declare Constants
'************************************************************************************
    Const ForAppending = 8    'Allows for adding information to a file
    Const ForWriting = 2    'Writes to a file(writes over existing file as well)
    Const ForReading = 1    'Reads a file

'************************************************************************************
'* Define Variables
'************************************************************************************
    'Path Variables
    Dim strTemplate    'Template File Location
    Dim strDocument    'Documenting the Log File

    'WMI Variables
    Dim objWMIService, objOSItem, objCSItem
    Dim colCSItems
    Dim strComputer
    strComputer = "."
    Dim strUserName
    strUserName = "HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\" &_
                "CurrentVersion\Explorer\Logon User Name"


    'FSO Variables
    Dim objFSO        'File System Object
    Dim objFile        'File Object
    Dim objTSO        'Temporary System Object
    Dim objFolder 'Folder Object
    objFolder = "C:\Templates\"

    'Window Variables
    Dim intLeft, intTop, inthorizontal, intVertical

    'GUI Objects
    Dim strTemplateName 'Path of Template
    Dim txtTemplateName
    Dim txtTitle
    Dim txtHead



'************************************************************************************
'* Set the Values for the Variables
'************************************************************************************
    'Set up an instance of the WshShell object
    'Common Variable Values

    'WMI Values
    Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:" _
        & "{impersonationLevel=impersonate}!\\" _
        & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")


    Set colCSItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery("SELECT * FROM Win32_ComputerSystem")

    'FSO Values
    Set objFSO = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")


'************************************************************************************
'* Main Processing Section
'************************************************************************************
'Events

Sub Window_Onload
Set objWMIService = GetObject("winmgmts:\\" & strComputer & "\root\cimv2")
Set colCSItems = objWMIService.ExecQuery("Select * From Win32_DesktopMonitor")
For Each objOSItem in colCSItems
intHorizontal = objOSItem.ScreenWidth
intVertical = objOSItem.ScreenHeight
Next
intLeft = (intHorizontal - 800) / 2
intTop = (intVertical - 600) / 2


End Sub

    'Check to see if a template already exists. The application will not overwrite
    'an existing template with the same name.
    Sub CreateTemplate
         TemplateCheck()
    End Sub

'************************************************************************************
'* Procedure Section
'************************************************************************************
    Function TemplateCheck()
strTemplate = objFolder & txtTemplateOutput.value


Msgbox strTemplate
If objFSO.FileExists(strTemplate) Then
Msgbox "Document Exists"
         Exit Function




        Else
         If Not objFSO.FolderExists(objFolder) Then
         objFSO.CreateFolder(objFolder)
         End If
         strTemplate = objFolder & txtTemplateOutput.value
                objFSO.CreateTextFile(strTemplate)
             Set objFile = objFSO.OpenTextFile(strTemplate, ForWriting)

                 objFile.WriteLine "<?xml version=" & """1.0""" & " encoding=" & """utf-8""" & "?>" & vbcrlf & _
                                        "<rootElement>" & vbcrlf & _
                                        "<docElement>" & vbcrlf & _
                                        "Add your content here." & vbcrlf & _
                                        "</" & "docElement>" & vbcrlf & _
                                        "</rootElement>"
                 objFile.Close()
         MsgBox strTemplate & " Created"
        End If
    End Function


</script>

<body>
Enter a title (Example:skeleton.xml)<br />
<input id="txtTemplateName" type="text" value="skeleton.xml" name="txtTemplateOutput" style="width: 336px"/><br />

    <br />

    <input type="button" value="Create Template" name="run_button" onClick="CreateTemplate">
<p>

<span id = "DataArea"></span>
</p>
</body>
</html>


Don't copy this line or any after this one.

Later this week, we will finish the XML document and start an XSD. Next up, I will add a Python example that creates the same XML file. This may seem simple now, but we will be building on this in multiple languages, scripting and code.
Do you have any cool code you would like to share with us?

Web Dev Network - My Accidental International Group

2010-09-08T12:29:00.000-05:00

Before reading this, you should be aware terms may be used that will not be explained, but the group I reference will do just that. If you want to know more about the Dev Meet Up hosted by ESRI coming to Decatur, you should read Part I.

With so many resources online, in an effort to tame the beast of information; resources have been created such as twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and more. There have even tools to bring those resources together like Tweetdeck. But with all of the resources and integration tools that highway of information can still become a blur.

The benefit of connecting to the world allows for access to a great deal of information. Unfortunately there is a lot of bad, outdated, incorrect, and copied or you pick problems that you have run into. The negatives of increased information access will quickly become visible if you are a programmer like me. But there are other options.

Sign up for a social network account; I like to call them Pro Networks as it relates to the main purpose as to why I use them. My twitter account is basically made up of people that I follow in the field of GIS and programmers. When you want to interact with your peers, your tweet can be swept away by the tweet fleet. These are people that post so much you may miss most of the posts that you follow. Again, we narrowed the internet information, but it is still not effective. What is the best way to share information that is quality? There is a way to do that too.

People. Meet the people behind the icon. At conferences, training, and professional meetings; we have the chance to talk to our peers. There is also a chance for us to present to many at one location. So, we have a solution for acquiring good information. But where are the people in your own area and professional field. So, here we are good information without the ease of locating our peers or mass information that may be bad that makes our peers more visible. Which do you pick? By accident, it has become very clear. The one you pick is - both. We will look at that in just a moment as I will bring all of this together, but I have to add one more piece.
I am a web developer, programmer, gadget geek. If it's tech, I want to learn. But as a web developer in GIS, there is another dynamic. GIS is not all I use for my development. What happens when you go outside the scope of support for any organization? And welcome to the gray area of programming, the neutral zone of support. When support steps back, it's time for us to step up. Remember how you are told to write efficient code. How valuable is efficient support?

As a web developer and I am including mobile, we all have to resolve the issue of finding the starting line. The more you integrate, new starting lines pop up and then you stop in the middle of the race and ask; what am I supposed to do now? In web development, there is something call the separation of content, presentation and functionality. Now these three areas can actually be broken down even further. So we are now in a new area, but a very similar concept. Now we need to know all of the pieces of web development, but we also need to know the details. If you try combining this with professional interaction and are either confused or frustrated and want to stop reading - WAIT! What if there was a way to resolve these issues and someone was attempting to offer genuine help. Well I am. Now that I have gone through a few issues that you may have run into, I know there are more. But I think we can work together and knock these barriers down. Let me tell you about the Web Dev Network - My Accidental International Group.

The Web Dev Network is nothing I ever considered starting. I have a lot of ideas, good and bad alike, but this one came to me out of a series of events. And yes, Needs - Mother of Invention.

All I really wanted to do was Meet Up with my peers to discuss programming and there is one happening in the city I work. We are having a GIS Dev Meet Up. The great part about this is that it has a narrow focus to maximize content quality for GIS development and it's in my geographic areas. But there is the other issue; I think there should be more events like this in other areas. For this to ever happen, I depend on the developer community. As far as the meeting for brainstorming on code that I wanted to have, I posted it on Twitter so others in Illinois could come to the meeting. After posting, I was asked if the meeting could be online. With the idea that it could be accomplished and not necessarily having the resources, I said yes. Fortunately, USGS came to my rescue and with the help of Shelley Silch of the Geospatial Liaison for Illinois in Urbana; we had our first online meeting in May 2010. Shelley connected us from Urbana and I presented from Decatur. The meeting was live with screen sharing and "hot screen" sharing and the opportunity for the group to communicate just like you would at any meeting. Not only that. Audio and screen recordings were made for others that may not have had a chance to attend.

To announce meetings, I initially started announcing on twitter and Lone GIS Pro; a group on Google and e-mailing. If you don't have a GIS team and you want to be connected to your peers, you may be interested in Lone GIS Pro. Please let me know if you are. But as far as notifying others of meetings, I needed a better way for sharing. I joined several groups with areas of focus that I am interested in individually, but to get the word out, I started the group Web Dev Network. This would help me get the word to the attendees from several states. But I received requests to join the group from Canada and countries in Europe and Asia. With the opportunity to remove one barrier, the Web Dev Network became international. Wait a second. Now this will just become one of those groups that as it grows individuals will disappear and activity will do the same.

My goal is for the Web Dev Network to be the largest small group that facilitates sharing knowledge among professionals. This way we can become part of a group and work together to make it grow, and this should facilitate the visibility of our peers in our own geographical regions. As the group grows, it would help to have volunteers to take the lead at the various levels to maintain the local level person to person interaction. Please let me know if you are a member of the Web Dev Network and you are interested in helping. Together we can grow as small team of professionals while filling a need in the pool of knowledge with integrity.

With that, I know where I want to grow with this group. If you would like to grow this way too, please join us and we will grow together.

Thanks.

Hope to share with you soon.

Chris

GIS - Removing The Barriers Of Geography To Open The Corridors Of Knowledge

2010-09-06T13:55:00.002-05:00

With ESRI, hosting Dev Meet Ups across the country, I wanted to share why these little events are huge opportunities. An invaluable resource that any developer can acquire is connecting with knowledgeable developers in their field. Unfortunately, there are usually barriers that prevent some developers from accessing them. But even the developers that have access to what is needed to attend events, there is another roadblock that must be addressed. Which events are the best? What event will help me grow in my field and meet others that would be of value to my gowth? There are many questions that can be asked, but the point is; nobody can go to everything and travelling can have a negative impact on the time for which anyone has to gain knowledge.

Now, we have ESRI Dev Meet Ups for the first time, and for many a barrier of meeting fellow developers and ESRI staff has been removed. Don't be too quick to dismiss such an opportunity as something that may not pertain to you or your organization as some of the good things that can be taken away from events never has been, never is, and never will be advertised. Here are a few.

I have had the opportunity to meet the founder and President of ESRI, Jack Dangermond while taking Developing ArcGIS Server Applications with the Web ADF. If you want to know how I got that chance; I will tell you my secret. I walked up to him and introduced myself. He was having lunch with someone at the campus cafeteria, but I enjoy GIS so much that this was not going to be an excuse not to meet Jack. I am glad to have had the opportunity to meet him and I know from reputation and experience that the GIS community is very important to Jack and what we have to say. If you have the opportunity to meet him; I encourage it.

My Developing ArcGIS Server Applications with the Web ADF in .NET was taught by Rob Burke, the author of Getting to Know ArcObjects: Programming ArcObjects with VBA. He was helpful during training as well as away and I hope that you get the chance to take one of his classes as well. His presentation and knowledge add quality to the course content that can not be purchased.

During the same time period, I went to the DevSummit and met Jim Barry, ESRI EDN Manager. Well, I introduced myself to him to. I had plenty of questions and ideas. He is very interested in listening to what the developer community has to say and meeting their needs as a whole while the individual is also important, they don't take precedence over the community. And Jim will be at most of the Meet Ups. This alone is an excellent reason for all developers that can; to attend a Meet Up in their area. If you have ideas bring them and talk to Jim about them. If there is something that frustrates you or is just a concern as a developer, don't complain to the world, communicate with Jim and your fellow developers at the Meet Up.

I want to thank the City of Decatur for the opportunities that I have had for training, conferences, and other GIS events of which I have had the chance to attend. Because of these opportunities, this is the third year in a row that I have been formally recognized in the field of GIS.

In 2008, I was the Grand Prize Winner of the ArcGIS 9.3 Release Candidate Incentive Program which allowed for me to donate the prize, an annual EDN subscription saving the city over $1,000 so that they would not need to purchase the software that I used for development.

In 2009, I was published in GIS Notes and online magazine produced by ILGISA, who is having their fall conference next month on October 20-21 2010.

And this year, ESRI asked me to provide a keynote for developers migrating from the Web ADF, an API that is being deprecated by ESRI. I will talk about migrating to the JavaScript API 2.0 and integrating JavaScript libraries, but I have developed in Silverlight as well.

I will be covering new areas that you will not see on ESRI's website including separating content, presentation, and functionality; unobtrusive JavaScript to allow for development in multiple JavaScript libraries and learn how to make the ScriptManager work with the JSAPI so you can use the AJAX Control Toolkit in the .NET Framework 4.0. In addition, I Beta tested Visual Studio 2010.

Finally, I will be sharing a new custom tool that I have created. You may have or might be using this tool, at this time, but the one I will be sharing will remove complexity be more powerful than many like it. It will be for both C# and VB.NET in Silverlight and the JSAPI 2.0.

Don't forget while you may have started developing in these new API's, this is a good time to make a connection with developers that work in the API of your choice, allowing you to connect after the Meet Up is over when your application appears to be disconnected or simply breaks and it will.

Want to know what the new tool that I spoke about is? I plan on sharing it exclusively at the ESRI Dev Meet Up in Decatur, Illinois on September 16th! So register now and get the word out.Tweet that!

Talk to you real soon. Or do you want to hear more? If you do, check out Part II and learn about how and why the Web Dev Network was created, and why it even surprised me.

Chris

Novice To Network Update

2010-09-05T01:28:00.002-05:00

The Novice To Network series will have to wait as it would be a little too much content to write about in such a short time before the Dev Meet Up; so there will be a short two part post which will be titled; GIS - Removing The Barriers Of Geography To Open The Corridors Of Knowledge.

Part I is already written and it will be about the Dev Meet Up itself. I'm just tired. But I want to make sure that it still looks good after a good night's sleep.

Part II will be about the Web Dev Network as I plan on demonstrating how both are related in providing connectivity to the community.

Talk to you soon.

Chris

Drive To Seventy-Five

2010-09-03T03:09:00.001-05:00

With the Dev Meet Up just thirteen days away, I will be redirecting my efforts in getting the word out in a different manner in an attempt to reach more GIS developers that may still not have heard of the Meet Up coming to Decatur. The blog series, From Novice To Network came to a quick halt as soon as it began, but the activites that pulled me away from the writing have been resolved, and I will continue writing the series today.

From Novice to Network - The Team Behind My Knowledge And How You Can Build One Too

2010-08-26T23:29:00.000-05:00

It has been a busy week and I have had the pleasure of enjoying some intrinsic rewards that one can only enjoy if you are in a career in which fits your professional abilities and ambitions. There was a time that I placed a priority in choosing a career based on how much money I could make, but I decided that it was more important to pursue a career that could I could enjoy. I don't want to spend the work week looking forward to the weekend. The path to becoming a GIS Web Developer was unexpected to say the least as well as the help that I have received along the way. Without the willingness to provide genuine help by others, I would not be GIS Web Developer.

But this week, everything has come full circle, from where I used to be to interacting with some developers that are in a situation with limited opportunities for growth as a professional.

It's important that your realize that this will be a series of posts leading up to an event that I can't put into the right words, that has the kind of meaning for me where a milestone would be a minor accomplishment in comparison to what this upcoming event means to me. It's not just the event itself, there is a bigger picture that I want to share with my fellow developers and programmers starting out. There are methods I have learned that I think is not only of value to me as a GIS Web Developer, but any professional.

In recent years, I have had the opportunity to have the financial backing to enhance my knowledge and have done my best to give back for such an opportunity. Now I am working on giving back to the development community and to those that may be in a situation that I used to be in; where barriers to knowledge, resources, or funds may have made growth difficult.

My objective is simple, but not necessarily easy. I want to eliminate the costs to gain basic knowledge, eliminate ignorance of who could help; this can be a major hurdle in itself, and last I want to eliminate the barrier of geography.

If you haven't had the chance to attend conferences, training, seminars and other events. You might not be able to travel the world, but with the help of USGS and other professionals, we will bring the world to you in respect to professional development. This isn't a chat, forum, or a one way live event where presenters talk and you type. I have created a group on LinkedIn called Web Dev Network. With the help of USGS, we meet once a month online, live and use screen sharing. You will be able to speak with other web developers and an added dynamic is members using "hot screen" sharing, meaning you can share with the group using your own resources, provide a presentation to the group. If it's related to professional growth as a developer, this group is for you. It is a group that is meant to give you an opportunity to interact with your peers. Novices to professional are welcome.

I am looking forward to sharing more with you, but as I post, if you have stories about what or who might have helped you grow as a professional, please share with my readers and my peers as we are very interested in what you have to say.

See you at the next post.

Chris

Create a Theme Team at ESRI User Conference

2010-07-09T13:28:00.001-05:00

In 2007, I attended the ESRI conference in San Diego. One of the things that I remember most is; "My goodness this is a lot of people.". I t gives you a chance to meet a lot of people that do what you do. But there is the question of; How do you find them? You travel a long way and tweeted the while you were waiting to get here, but now it's time to talk to real people. This is why you invest in Pro Networks like Twitter. You're here! Don't tweet up. Meet up. But there still lies the issue of how to find who does what you do. There are too many people to ask. I won't be there but I did have an idea when I was at the User Conference. But hold on, I am about to post a very cool template. How can a template be cool? If you have been burned trying to integrate the JavaScript API with AJAX, I will be posting a working example that uses .NET 4.0, AJAX 4.0, JSAPI 2.0, and working examples in the Script libraries including round corners with Rico, drag with scriptaculous, panel layouts with Dojo, using server controls to run your ArcGIS Server JavaScript API 2.0 functions within AJAX.

Thought I would tell you about this as it's free, it works and it will be extended. But back to my idea on how to find others that do what you do. Be part of a theme so when you go home you can have a virtual team.

At work, you need tweet-ability. At conferences you need visibility. My thought, what if others new what you did as soon as they saw you? I created four shirts on my spreadshirt store. There are four colors and a GIS professional skill area reference for GIS - managers, developers, users, and cartographers. You can buy these if you want or where your own shirt and write on it. If you want one of these and don't have time before you travel; have it sent to where you are staying. I am more interested in attendees making connections. But there are too many people to meet in such a short time and finding a valuable connection can be invaluable.

No matter what enjoy the conference. I will be tweeting.

Talk to you soon.

Chris

Twitter World – Part 2

2010-03-01T21:26:00.005-06:00

Welcome back. If you completed your assignment from Twitter World, you now have a digital head shot picture, a twitter name, and a little description about yourself.
So, let’s head on over to Twitter and create an account.

Click the link above if you haven’t already and it should take you to a page similar to the one displayed below.

Click Sign Up Now.
At this point, you will be on the Join the Conversation Page.
On this page:
1. Enter your first and last name in the box next to the text that displays Full name.
2. Pick a user name. I picked twhitterWorld for this example.
3. Enter your password and e-mail address.
4. Uncheck, let others find me by my e-mail address. We’ll get you connected, but in a Pro Network way.
5. Uncheck, send me the inside scoop. You can come back and enable this later if you like once you become comfortable with twitter, but if you feel you have enough e-mail, it’s best to skip this for now.

6. Click Create my account.

7. Three steps of rejection and one step of validation and you will have a twitter account.
8. On the page for suggestions; you’re learning in a tutorial, the last thing you need is to become sidetracked by suggestions.
9. Scroll down to the bottom of Step 1 suggestions and click step.

10. Now you are on the friends page. You don’t need any, not yet. Don’t worry, you will find them, in a Pro Network way.
11. Scroll down and click Next step: others.

12. Now this is interesting, but I recommend that you skip looking for things that interest you. You already know what interests you and by using twitter in a Pro Network manner, sources of finding what interests you, will take care of itself.

13. Last step in the setup. Click Next step: You’re done! At this point you’re almost done.

14. Click , Please confirm your account and this will send an e-mail to the e-mail address you entered earlier.

15. Open your e-mail application and you should have either received or soon receive an e-mail from twitter.
16. Open the e-mail and copy the link to confirm you account.
17. Paste the link into your browser URL.
18. You will be taken to a page like the one displayed below.

19. Select Login and then enter your user name and password.
20. Once you are logged in, you’re page will look similar to the following.

We are going to stop here and in the next post, we are going to go through twitter settings. But before you go, we are going to change just two settings.
Select Settings. Change your the time zone appropriate to your location and then check the box that displays protect my tweets and then click save.
You will be hidden from others for now, but you will soon be connected using the Pro Network method.
Talk to you very soon with Twitter World – Part 3 Tweak the Twitter Settings

Twitter World

2010-02-22T14:29:00.001-06:00

Like e-mail, social networks are becoming common knowledge. But if you are in the group that is too confused to even ask a question, you have come to the right place as there will be a series on Twitter World. It’s going to be short posts that take you through every step from signing up for a twitter account to taming the beast social networks can become.

With no further ado, let’s talk twitter. Simply put, Twitter is the equivalent of passing notes to one another; short notes, but with access to the world. Twitter can be used for socializing, following your favorite celebrity around, and other things. But my focus will demonstrate how Twitter can be used to get your work done. If you have unlimited funds, resources and knowledge; you may not want to use social networks. However, if you are not in that category, you can’t afford not to know about pro networking and how to use it effectively.

I think that just about covers everything. Wait! Where’s the information? Well, simply put I told you my posts will be short. But, you have an assignment for the next post of creating a twitter account and here it is:

Gather the following and there will be questions about what you need, but I will cover the why I recommend the following and the pros and cons to them:

Pick a user name; ideally your real name
Take digital picture of yourself; head shot only please
Think about, what people do you want to connect with(using twitter for fun) or who you need to connect with(using twitter for work) and then write a short description about you

With that, in the next post I will go step by step on creating you first twitter account.

Talk to you soon.

Chris

Code Conundrum

2010-02-17T14:12:00.000-06:00

I have been working on an ArcGIS Server web app. I first attempted to use .Net, but it was a pain to easily add controls. After that I checked out Silverlight, which I like, but I wanted to used xml files for my xaml instead of xaml files and did not like the idea of creating what appeared to be two projects; desktop and web. Next step, I checked out Adobe Flex; but they had their own proprietary pages like Microsoft XAML. So, last stop sent me to a free language; JavaScript. I have used ESRI’s JavaScript API's, but have found documentation to be inconsistent or incomplete for the purpose of learning. What I mean by inconsistent is that variable change; no big deal you say? When you try to integrate several samples and your not sure about the purpose for each item, and have to logically relate the examples to a new definition, it can be difficult and error prone. That didn’t stop me. I started working on JavaScript driven web page and everything went smooth at first. I had a panel that contained navigation, table of contents, overview map, and the map itself all using AJAX and it was an .aspx page; not a JavaScript sample your likely to find on ESRI’s samples at the time of this writing. You could collapse sections of the panel and drag the panel across the screen. It was well formed using XHTML and even used CSS. But then I attempted to add the identify task and here ends my story of creating and begins the story of creativity and problem solving.

This is a short story as it’s in the works. I am re-creating the samples with external CSS for style, external JS for map interaction, XHTML to ensure writing a well-formed web page and writing it in .aspx. But that’s the easy part, I am documenting nearly line of code, tag, or style I create. This is the least enjoyable part of programming, and the greatest necessity. I want to be able to find out what is happening when, why and how, so I am making notes to myself for every piece. Once completed or if I hit another virtual brick wall, I plan on sharing it. So far, this endeavor has gone bumpily smooth; errors along the way, but none at the moment waiting for me at my desk, once I return from lunch.

Talk to you soon.

Chris

My First Lunch Blog

2010-02-10T13:02:00.001-06:00

Right now I have bloggers block, but I will go with that. With everyone tightening their money belts; this fits in with what I have frequently had to do in my professional career; develop whatever is asked with limited resources, knowledge, and time. But I have always had a wild card, many of you know of the online version as social networking, but the spin on that term is pro networking. If you follow me on twitter or see who I follow on twitter, these people are invested professionals. An invested professional is someone that gives/receives feedback for professional personal growth. As I am writing this blog new “tweets” are popping up with twhirl, which I highly recommend if you want to tweet from your desk without keeping a browser window open with the temptation of reading every tweet that is posted.

If you don’t know what twitter is, I am going to do a little write up about it; not how everyone uses it, how I use it; for the purpose of a Pro Network tool. This is the beginning of a series of posts that I will be writing about twitter and Pro Networking tools. Now I am not saying my way is the best way to use the tools that will appear in future posts; in fact I know it isn’t. That’s the power of Pro Networks. Most everyone I follow on twitter, is more knowledgeable than I am, but I help when I can. Is my help always good? No, but you can’t grow in any professional network or career if you don’t try.

Follow me on my twitter page or link to my blog as I will be posting “simple” step by step posts and for those of you that use these same tools or just what to know what they are. For those of you that are in the know, I need your “Pro Network” feedback, otherwise I will need to change my blog to “Clueless Chris”; well, if it gets visitors I can go for that. If you are just here to find out what this is all about and have questions, ask them. It might be the piece of knowledge that you need to understand what you might see as mumbo jumbo.

Talk to you soon.

Chris

Social Networks Go Pro

2009-12-06T21:50:00.004-06:00

It's Not Really All "Social"

Do you use Twitter? That's a question that I frequently ask people with a common response of, "No, I don't use those things." It seems people think sites like Twitter, Facebook and others, are sites just for socializing. They can be, and for some it's a way to unwind and have fun, but we aren't going to talk about Social Networks. There are professionals who have to get their work done with finite resources and the perception that these are strictly online toys can actually hinder the ability to do ones job.
Due to various circumstances that limit access to resources, information or training; there was still a need to for continuous knowledge to do my job. After talking to many people from all over the world, this is by no means unique.

Enter Pro-Networks. The difference between Social Networks and Pro-Networks are not based on what is used but how it is used. Many professionals have used forums to ask questions, RSS feeds to obtain the latest information and e-mail to interact with one another.

Finally, I have had the opportunity to work in a whole new way. The first tool I use is Twitter, which you can check out at http://twitter.com/ That is my picture over their on the left, you can see what I am asking, saying or whining about on Twitter. You can even click on the "Join" link to sign up for twitter or click on my name at the top to go to my twitter page which will give you the opportunity to see who I interact with, follow or follows me. I program in Geographic Information Systems for the web and use Twitter to ask others questions about what I am working on, answer other Twitter users questions or we work together with ad-hoc brainstorming and to solve whatever is asked, basically helping one another to eliminate the road block that keeps us from doing our job.

Sometimes I need to ask a question, provide information or answers in detail; then Twitter won't cut it. Its limit of 140 characters per entry does not allow it.

Providing Information

To provide information or answer a question, I use a Speed Blog. An example of this is at: My SpeedBlog It's a blog that I have no plan on doing except in the process of working on something. I post updates on Twitter using what is called a hashtag. I will say what I am doing and include a hashtag for my project and will state that my speedblog has been updated. It would something like this: I am trying to figure out why my #CollaborationApp isn't working and have posted it to my #SpeedBlog.

Asking Questions

Okay, I will use the SpeedBlog to ask questions in greater detail, but forums and online groups are ideal places to tap into the knowledge of others or can also be used to share our own knowledge. A site that I frequently go to is http://sitepoint.com/forums/ and the information is sent to one of my e-mail accounts. In addition to forums, I belong to a Google group called Lone GIS Pro. If you work with GIS; if you look around and there is no one to ask technical questions that relate to you job, you are a Lone GIS Pro. Responses or updates about the group are sent to my GMail account.

Lightning Info

I am quickly going to mention a few other resources and what I use them for in respect to Pro-Networks.

I started using Facebook to keep in touch with classmates about future class reunions.

On all of the home pages of my websites I have a mashup for any Amber Alerts. An example of one is here on my site in the left column, if there is one active: The Amber Alert feed in the left hand column is automatically updated. I always hope that there is nothing to report and wish it had it had more information than it does such as a map and other features so a reported child could be found as quickly as possible.

Flickr is something that I enjoy using to upload photos to automatically update my maps; I still want to get a camera that has geo-tagging, but for now I can use a free resource. If you create a Flickr account, you can upload your photos and place them on a map on the Flickr site. If you have an account with Google, you can register for a key to add a Google map to your website for free. If I went out, took a picture and uploaded it to Flickr; I could then place it on my map. The picture would then appear automatically on my Google map on my site as seen here: Flickr Pictures on Google Maps

With all these resources where is all the valid help? Do you go to page after page finding the same unanswered question? I do. Once I find an answer, I want immediate access to it from wherever I am. I don't want to tell someone; let me go take a look on my computer to check for the link. Instead I use delicious. Some use twitter for displaying links for drive by dog and pony shows. I will come back to this in, "Putting it All Together". You can see a set of links for delicious right below my Twitter feed. The delicious feed is automatically updated, but if you want the details, you can go to: My Delicious All links are structured in a hierarchy starting with the category which I use a number for, so I could group information together. All links have valid help, otherwise they are removed. You can also create a delicious network. This way you can share valid links with others in your network and check if a member of you network has information posted about what you are looking for. When you post a link to delicious, you can a notification pop up on Twitter. Who wants to write twice?

The last individual tool I will mention is LinkedIn . This is a site where you can share projects and news about your career with other professionals that work in similar fields or you just want to network with them professionally to know about career opportunities.
Are these all the tools? Absolutely not, but it's not just about the tool, but the method on using the tools. Did I mention they all cost the same? They're free and the only cost is not using them.

Putting it Together

Its time to turn all these simple little tools into power tools using my number one hobby with technology; trying new gadgets, integrating, and automating.

twitter; what I use it for and my recommendations for drive by dog and pony. I use twitter to ask/reply to questions technical/non-technical. There are times I will take a moment to whine with sarcasm or add a bit of dry humor. Other times I will say what I am doing; breaking programs, asking questions, posting information, and on occasion an, "Oh my, it worked." moment. "Drive by Dog and Pony Shows" are people posting links that are interesting, have something that will wow the twitter user, or a topic that the poster is passionate about. I have clicked on these links and some are interesting, some wow me, and some have good information. I want people to click on me links and I am sure everyone else wants people to click on theirs, but if they are valuable, why not structure them on some place like delicious? You can post to twitter from delicious and even turn it into and RSS feed.

If you have questions about the following tools, please ask; but for now here is a list on what they are and how I use them daily.

I have gmail, yahoo, Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn and other accounts; I do not want to check every account; what good are these tools if I have to do that?

Well, I start my day off and fire up Digsby; it minimizes as an icon in my taskbar and all of the accounts I just mentioned let me know if there is anything new added. It even lets you add POP3, IMAP, Hotmail and AIOL/AIM accounts. Of the social networks I mentioned, you can also add MySpace. In you are someone that used many social networks as opposed to e-mail; try Ping.fm and treat yourself to a tool that supports over fifty social networks. With Digsby and Ping.fm, be careful, if you don't check the settings you might find them more powerful than you hoped. Also when you install these tools, read before you click; it's free so if you accept all defaults, you could get what you consider to be garbage add-ons.

There are a few more tools that I will add to this blog, but for now I will provide one simple example.

Say someone else is searching for a lost pet. Whenever someone is looking for one, they usually have a picture, let you know where it was last seen and ask you to contact them if you see the pet. Why not ask others in your networks? Post a link on delicious with a brief description and have it automatically post to twitter. Now if you are using twhirl, there is a setting that allow for the posting of you status to those over fifty social networks. So now you have really gotten the word out, but it gets better, a picture of the pet could be uploaded to flickr and by using drag and drop, the picture is geo-tagged. If you have a Google map on your website, the picture will automatically appear. No people know where the pet was lost, what it looks like, and they can also know the status as you update it.

What kind of tools do you use and how do you use them?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Talk to you soon.

Chris

Coming up on my next blog will cover how to use the tools and the process in using them: Impediment to Progress

Hi, I'm Chris

2009-09-15T22:06:00.002-05:00

I have put off posting my first blog for some time, talking about tips and tricks and online social networks, but I want to back up for a moment. Let me take a moment to introduce myself; Hi, I'm Chris. I would like to answer two questions; the first I am frequently asked- "What do you do?" The response to this has always overwhelmed me, as I integrate and automate in an array of applications as this blog continues, you will see that I don't make a list to impress, it's just a list of apps that I have worked in. It would appear to be a difficult task to integrate apps, but thanks to collaboration and online social networks, my abilities to meet such requests are better than ever. The second question is one that I ask myself, how to utilize collaboration to facilitate the optimization of ones own abilities.

So, here I am. Having graduated from high school, which I have to believe, based on my grades, would place me in the rankings near the bottom of my graduating class and nearly failing a computer programming class while there; you might think that college isn't likely, and working/programming even less likely.

This might have all come true, except that I had an accidental discovery. It's not the type of discovery that teaches you how to get rich, my discovery was going to be the building blocks that would shape the type of professional I am and has given me the opportunity to do the type of work that I love with the college degree that is in a completely different field, but as I continue to explain in my multi-part intro-blog; as I have told many, in a way I never left my degree program, rather I might have re-defined it's use. Amazingly, part of the process of re-defining the “what kind of professional do I want to be”, gave me the opportunity to meet my wife.

But we will get to that later.

In the late 80's, I thought that I would like programming as I liked video games and gadgets; not a lot of deep thought, but it was high school. So while I was in high school, I took a computer programming class and nearly failed, so I dropped it. After this, I never even considered a possibility of programming or even working with computers as part of my job let alone as a career.

For some time I went on thinking that what I wanted to accomplish would be given to me because I wanted it.

It wouldn't be for nearly another ten years, but in 1995, I was in junior college, I succeeded becaused something I wanted was given to me, ironically for the last time, because something happened, which caused my ethics to completely change.

That one next on; Ethics Evolving