00:01Hi, I'm Larry Stout. I've been the GIS director for Hamilton County, Indiana, since 1996.

00:08We use the Flex viewer in Hamilton County. Our current production version is based on the Esri Flex viewer, version 2.2...

00:18...and we have modified it severely. Some of the modifications we've done, the users haven't really liked.

00:27I think of them as unenlightened users. What you can see here is, my mouse is over a parcel and so the...

00:38...boundary of that parcel has highlighted and a ToolTip has popped up...

00:42...showing the parcel number and the owner name.

00:48For those unenlightened users, we wrote the user preferences widget...

00:53...where they can use check boxes to turn on and off some of the enhancements.

01:03The ones that I want to bring to your attention are Show the MapTips; Highlight the Features on Mouse-over...

01:10...Show Coordinates and Map Scale, which is down in the corner--we use the Coordinate widget...

01:17...and we added the map scale to it; Restore the Map Extents when the Flex Viewer is opened next time...

01:31Here you can see, we've turned on some additional layers. We've turned on Topo, Edge of Pavement, and Parcel labels...

01:39...to what was already on. So if I closed the browser right now and ended my session and opened it back up tomorrow...

01:50...I would see exactly what I was looking at when I closed it. Now, again, some users, even if they like this feature...

02:03...they may decide, you know, sometimes I just want to go back to the beginning.

02:07So we put a new tool on the header controller. We call it Reset Extents and Layer Settings.

02:17And when you click on that tool, you get the map as it is described in config.xml.

02:26You get the basemap there, you get the extents, and you get the layer settings.

02:33We store the user preferences in local shared objects or Flash cookies. So the question came up.

02:40What if the user has disabled their Flash cookies? So in that case, the first time they change a user preference...

02:51...we give them a dialog telling them all the wonderful things they're going to be missing. Their preferences are...

02:59...indeed in force for their current session. They just can't save them for the next session. So we want them to know...

03:10...how much they're going to suffer from their silly concerns over security and privacy.