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Time Aware tip: Create a custom time slider label

Time Aware is a configurable app template that enables users to visualize time-enabled layers. It enhances the temporal capabilities of the web map, and can be configured to display time in different ways.

The Time Aware configurable app includes a slider that enables the viewer to play, pause, and interactively move forwards and backwards through time, depending on how it has been configured. The primary tabs for controlling slider functionality and appearance are Time Slider Options and Date/Time Format, found along the left side of the configuration panel.

In the Date/Time Format tab, pre-defined date formats can be chosen from a drop-down list.

For example, to display a year, choose the pre-defined date format “2015” from the drop-down. The Time Aware slider appears as shown below:

The date actually represents a season – 2012 on the slider represents the winter 2012 season, spanning the end of 2012 and beginning of 2013. To remove any ambiguity, a custom slider label can be created by adding text to the formatted date.

To add text, go to the Date/Time Format tab, and in Custom Date Format construct a string for the slider label. The Date can be expressed in a variety of standard formats, such as YYYY or YYY-MM-dd, and text can be placed within braces – [ and ]. Since our time animation settings were also cumulative, we used the following string in Custom Date Format:

[Cumulative observations through winter] YYYY [season]

The slider now appears as shown below:

View the Time Aware application shown above.

About the author

Corporate technology evangelist and advocate at Esri, focusing on ways to broaden access to geographic information and helping customers succeed with the ArcGIS system. On a good day I'm making a map, on a great day I'm on one. Email bszukalski@esri.com or connect on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernszukalski/).

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