Get started with a configurable viewer

It's often easier to build a web app by modifying a completed example, rather than beginning with nothing. Whether you're working with Silverlight, Flex, JavaScript, or SharePoint, there are easy ways to get started making a mapping app.

  • Silverlight—The ArcGIS Viewer for Microsoft Silverlight allows you to point and click through wizards that help you add the components you want in your application. To put a map in the app, you can browse to any map you've made in ArcGIS.com, or you can add map services interactively. You can have a ready-to-deploy Silverlight mapping application in a few minutes without writing any code.

  • Flex—A similar point-and-click "application builder" for creating apps with Adobe Flex is available when you download the ArcGIS Viewer for Flex. The viewer offers a variety of widgets and allows you to add maps from ArcGIS.com or your own combination of services.

  • JavaScript—If you're working with JavaScript, you can download templates from ArcGIS.com to help you frame and skin your application. You can add widgets from the ArcGIS API for JavaScript to add more functionality to the template app. The Basic Viewer template is a great place to start.

  • SharePoint—With ArcGIS for SharePoint, you can easily add maps to your SharePoint site to share ArcGIS Server, SharePoint, and GeoRSS data. The Map Web Part includes a point-and-click configuration experience to set up the layers and tools you want to share with your SharePoint users. Or if you've already created a web map with your layers ArcGIS.com, you can open it within the Map Web Part. You can also spatially enable SharePoint lists that contain addresses or coordinates for display in the Map Web Part.

  • Story Maps—Esri's Story Maps are a set of JavaScript-based application templates that enable you to create compelling web-based applications that include multimedia like photos and videos. Story Maps can be used to present photo-based tours, showcase curated collections of places, and tell stories related to geography and GIS data. Some Story Maps are available as hosted applications in ArcGIS Online and feature interactive WYSIWYG builders. They can all downloaded to your own web site or webserver and configured to point at your web maps. The complete source code is provided so you can customize them easily.