About displaying attributes with pop-up windows

Pop-up windows show information about something in the map, such as hiking trails, land values, or unemployment rates. Information for pop-up windows comes from three main types of layers: map notes, service layers you find and add to the map, and data you've imported from a file.

With features you create on the map, you enter the content for each feature manually and it gets stored as data in each feature. For example, if you draw ten hiking trails on the map, you create a pop-up window for each trail and include a description of the trail, a URL to a web page about that trail, and a URL to a JPG or PNG file that shows a picture of the trail. These pop-up windows are useful if you have a small number of features you want to add to a map and only want to provide basic information about them (title, description, image, and a link). See Adding map notes for more information.

Features you add from a delimited text file or GPX file are also part of your map. However, unlike editable layers, the pop-up windows are automatically created when the map viewer adds the data to the map. By default, the pop-up windows show all the attributes, so you probably want to configure them to only show the most relevant information for your map. See Adding layers from files and Configuring pop-up windows for more information.

With service layers, the information for pop-up windows comes from the attributes of the feature in the service. Pop-up windows for OGC WMS are not supported at this time. Any text or formatting you specify when you configure the pop-up window will appear on all of the pop-up windows. In other words, you can't manually enter a title, description, image, and so on, for each specific feature. Feature-specific information has to come from the attribute set available in the map service or feature service you are configuring. See Configuring pop-up windows for more information.

What value do they add to your map?

Pop-up windows reveal important information when your audience wants to see it in a way that makes sense to them. As the map author, you define the list of visible fields, hidden fields (for example, do you really need to show a feature's ObjectID?), and how to present that information. For example, do you want to show a simple list of attributes or provide a richer interactive experience for visualizing and comparing features in a particular layer by providing custom-formatted text and charts? The pop-up windows you enable and configure in the map viewer are viewable in most web map clients.

What decisions are involved in configuring pop-up windows?

The main decisions you make as a map author are what information you want to show and what's the best way to show that information. For example, if you wanted to show the public where they could swim, fish, and boat along Mississippi Gulf, you might configure pop-up windows to show the address, type of access, and image of public access points. Even though your layer probably has numerous other fields about the location and type of point, you wouldn't want to show it in your pop-up window. Your audience wouldn't be interested and it would detract from the more important (to your audience) information. The images below show what these two pop-up windows might look like: the first one has only been enabled (and therefore shows all the attributes in the service) and the second one has been configured.

What are the different parts of a pop-up window?

Configurable pop-up windows based on features in a service can include a title, descriptive content such as a list of field attributes or text you customize, media elements such as an image or pie chart, and links to attachments of the feature. See Configuring pop-up windows for details. Pop-up windows for features you add to a map are preconfigured and can include a title, description, an image, and a link. See Adding map notes for details.

Displaying contents of configurable pop-up windows

You can configure what is displayed in the pop-up window for the features in each layer in the map, specifying how the fields (attributes) of each feature are represented in the pop-up window. For features you add to a map, this configuration is fixed, but for feature service and map service layers, you can configure the pop-up window in different ways, and you can also configure how attributes of the features can be edited within the pop-up window. This section focuses on the different options for displaying contents in configurable pop-up windows.

Your layer may contain a large amount of data with accompanying attribute information, but displaying it all will overwhelm your audience and detract from the message of the map. For example, you might have a map layer that contained address points for the Sioux Falls, SD, area with twenty-five attribute fields, many of which required additional documentation to understand the attribute values. If you wanted to create a map that displayed houses in different neighborhoods, you would want to enable the configured pop-up window to only display a few attributes, such as ADDRESS and THUMB. This would present your audience with pop-up windows showing the addresses and thumbnail images of houses in the Sioux Falls area. Below are examples of how these pop-up windows might look if you just enabled them (first image) compared with configuring them (second image).

When you configure your pop-up windows, you'll want to choose the most appropriate content display option. Below is a brief overview of the four options.

A list of field attributes

Use a list of field attributes when you want to show typical name/value identify results. You can modify the visibility, order, number formatting, and date formatting so the information appears in a logical and understandable format. Below is an example of how you might configure a pop-up window with a list of field attributes.

A description from one field

When you choose a description from one field, all the contents of one field are displayed in the description. It's a useful option when you have attributes that contain a custom description. Below is an example of how you might configure a pop-up window using a description from one field.

Custom attribute display

This option lets you define, format, and lay out the information you want to display. You can embed attributes and control them via a rich text experience. This is a good option if you want to enter the attribute information yourself, and format it with rich-text editing tools for controlling font color, size, style, and so on. Below is an example of how you might configure a pop-up window using a custom attribute display.

No attribute information

Your pop-up window does not need to contain attribute information. Sometimes, a title or an image is all that's needed to convey information such as points of interest. Below is an example of how you might configure a pop-up window with no attribute information.