Esri Developers Summit 2019
DVG is back from the Esri Developer Summit 2019 in Palm Springs California. The Dev Summit is one of the key mapping events of the year that brings together the best minds and resources in GIS and spatial application development, and it never disappoints. In terms of web applications, the Dev Summit covered everything under the sun. Everything from how to automate your web GIS to building mobile first apps with the ArcGIS Runtime SDK and high end 3D visualization in the browser. There is simply too much to cover in one digest, however we wanted to share a few of the advanced web mapping and app development news we are most excited about.
Enhancements to the ArcGIS API for Javascript (JSAPI) 
The next version of JSAPI has many great enhancements, such as high performance feature layers leveraging the compact nature of feature tiles and WebGL. The client side rendering experience continues to improve at a rapid clip with custom WebGL layer views, Likewise Esri has enhanced their Arcade expressions suite to provide highly engaging, aesthetic and informative data visualizations. Similar to the Arcade expressions enhancements in ArcGIS Online, the JSAPI includes the ability to overlay layers and perform spatial analysis on the fly.
Progressive Web Apps 
We are very excited to see the developments in building progressive web apps that leverage Esri technology. If you are looking to build spatial applications with the ArcGIS Javascript API and latest web frameworks, but also want a native mobile application feel, progressive web apps are the answer. There were a ton of great tips on how to meet user needs, high level best practices and how to measure your application performance to meet PWA standards. In short, what we are always concerned about: how to provide the best user experience!
ArcGIS REST JS – ArcGIS REST Consistent and Modular
Esri has never offered more options to use whatever language or front end framework you choose, made better by such offerings as the open source ArcGIS REST JS package. A fantastic open source tool created by the Esri R&D team (you can check out their repo here) Think of it not as a replacement for the ArcGIS Javascript API but more of a javascript corollary to the ArcGIS API for Python. The ArcGIS REST JS package provides a consistent interface for ArcGIS REST requests, streamlining authentication and user sessions, and managing ArcGIS Online or Portal. It also does a great job of hiding those idiosyncrasies in the ArcGIS REST schemas and provides more informative error code / response handling! Needless to say, we are excited about that last one.
To sum up, Esri has continued to embrace their developer community, allowing all organizations to choose their development environment, programming language or framework of choice (ArcGIS Runtime), while still providing a consistent, comprehensive and deeply enriching user experience for all applications. We have never had more tools at our disposal and can’t wait to put some of these new technologies into practice in our projects in the coming months.
