Features

This is just some of the functionality available out of the box with IMF. Most users will only require a small proportion of these tools. Administrators can create as many different websites as they wish, and can easily add or remove tools from each one, just by editing a few XML configuration files.  No programming is required.  

New features are being added to IMF all the time, either as part of regular updates or in response to specific requests. Please contact us if you have a specific requirement that does not appear to be in this list. It is rarely necessary to develop anything from scratch. Most requirements can be met by adapting or simply configuring an existing function - a single function will often have many different options available.

For ease of use the list of functionality has been broken down into the following categories:

Look and feel

Almost any aspect of the IMF interface can be customised, with no programming knowledge required, just by editing a site configuration XML file

  • Titles, colours, logos,buttons, tools and tabs all defined in XML
  • Alternative buttons, toolsets and tab images availabe
  • Easily add new tools and buttons using XML.
  • Button and tool bar with built-in tools that can be included in your site
  • Spacing control to separate tools and buttons into logical groups.
  • Support for multiple toolsets.
  • Multiple tab bar formats including rounded tabs, easy to add new tabs using XML.
  • Predefine copyright message for display on map.
  • Predefine watermark with scale thresholds  
  • Option to create your entire alternative GUI interfaces, specified in XML

Accessibility

As a widely used commercial off-the-shelf product, IMF benefits from a considerable amount of time and effort spent making it as accessible as possible within the constraints that apply to any web mapping application.

  • Websites can be easily customised to include only appropriate functionality
  • IMF is compatible with a wide range of browsers
  • Alt tags all tabs, buttons, tools and map images defined in XML
  • Ultra thin web application with minimal use of client side scripting. See performance section below for more detail
  • Underlying functionality can be made available in alternative formats eg "find my nearest X" , "what facilities are in my area?"

This case study  from chichester District Council shows how they have used IMF to make spatial infromation in a variety of formats to meet the requirements of e-government priority outcomes G5 (property related information online) and G20 (compliance with level AA of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines )

User help and feedback

IMF's intuitive interface is complemented by a well designed help system that maximises user productivity and minimises support costs

  • Context sensitive help for active toolset.
  • Auto-generated help from XML text associated with tools and tabs.
  • Feedback link to send an e-mail message to your site administrator.
  • Configurable error reporting, including optional fault report from user

User Information

The IMF interface includes a host of basic features designed to provide users with information about where and what they can see on the map. More information is available using the advanced tools mentioned below

  • Real-time coordinate display when user moves mouse over the map.
  • crosshairs in centre of map, with map centre coordinates displayed below map
  • North arrow on map, automatically angled.
  • Scalebar on map, configurable units.
  • Interactive numeric scale display in status bar.
  • Display index map. Index map refreshes automatically when extent changes
  • map tips
  • map labels
  • Identify tool to display information about active layer. (see also advanced tools below)
  • Choose whether or not to display legend information

Navigation tools

IMF includes a wide range of navigation tools ranging from simple click and drag through to sophisticated gazetteers. These can easily be added or removed from a site just by editing the site configuration XML file

  • Pan (recenter) by mouse click or dragging the map.
  • Pan using compass buttons
  • Index map can be clicked to reposition the main map.  
  • Zoom to fixed scale or typed scale.
  • Zoom in using mouse click or rectangle.  
  • Zoom out by mouse click.
  • Zoom to previous extent, full extent, initial extent  
  • Zoom to place name (defined in XML)
  • Zoom to place name (stored in database).
  • Zoom to Ordnance Survey grid reference (using numeric, map sheet or hybrid references)  
  • Zoom to Ordnance Survey address point buildings, streets or postcodes
  • Zoom to layer extent
  • Zoom to latitude / longitude position.
  • Zoom to UTM position.
  • Find features by attribute value - free text with or without wildcards
  • Find features by attribute value - choose from predefined list eg ward name field in wards layer
  • easy to add more specialised gazetteers, eg for Local Land and Property Gazetteer (LLPG)

Layer control

most IMF sites will have a layer configuration XML file that gives administrators a wide range of options for controlling the appearance and behaviour of map layers.

  • Predefined themes or views that can be opened by the user. (see also Layer manager in personalisation and collaboration section)
  • Layers grouped into nested folders.
  • Legend graphics in layer list.
  • Independently controlled visibility of a layer's labels.
  • Display order independent of drawing order.
  • Folder controls, all on, all off.
  • Support for radio folders where only one layer can be on at a time.
  • Layers can be hidden from user control.
  • Virtual layers, layers organized into a group that appears as one layer.
  • Metadata links for layers or layer groups.
  • Scale dependent layers.
  • User restrictions preventing the user from changing visibility of a layer.
  • Automatic refresh option.
  • Predefined scale threshholds in each website  - different websites using same map service can have different scale threshholds
  • Predefined buffers for individual layers when zooming to selected features, finding by attribute or selecting by attribute

Printing

One of IMF's main strengths is the flexibility of its printing functions, most of which can be configured in the print configuration XML file

  • Create printable pdf maps from customisable XML templates 
  • Print maps at current extent, current scale or predefined scale
  • Templates can include standard logos, copyright text etc
  • Templates can include multiple sections of user supplied text as entered into free text field(s) or chosen from a drop down list(s).
  • Dynamic creation of user input form when required by a print template
  • Extensive annotation and markup functionality - see below under collaboration and personalisation
  • Powerful selected set functionality (inc filters) - see below under advanced tools

Personalisation and Collaboration

A powerful feature of IMF is the way that it can be used to give users control over what they see and then share that work with others. However, this remains under full administrative control via the site configuration XML file

  • User defined thematic symbology
  • User defined labels
  • User defined Bookmarks - save and restore a location extent.
  • Upload routines to display data in local shapefiles or GML files. (see also "extract" under integration and reporting below )
  • User markup tools. Draw a point, line, polygon, box or add a grid or text to the map.  
  • Clear tool to remove user markup.  
  • Location tool adding marker and geographic position text to the map.  
  • optional layer manager to let users pick layers themselves
  • Save session to client or server
  • Automatic cleanup of unused server sessions
  • Send session by email to yourself or someone else.
  • Send maps by email to yourself or someone else.  

Advanced Tools

IMF contains many advanced tools that can be invaluable in particular situations, and can sometimes make a web application feasible where previously a desktop application was thought necessary. These tools are usually added to a site just by editing the site configuration XML file

  • Drill-down identify tool to display information from all visible layers.  
  • Buffer identify tool to display information within a distance of a point.  
  • Measure distance tool drawing multiple segment lines.  
  • Measure area tool drawing a polygon Projection capabilities (coordinate conversion routines).
  • Advanced identify and selection routines.
    • Select by point, radius, line, box, or polygon with optional defaults for individual layers
    • Select by buffer or select by layer (intersect)
    • Interactive query builder with prompts for example data
    • Automatic default report for queryable layers.
    • Zoom to selected feature(s)
    • Acetate layers are queryable like any other.
    • Drill down identify report to show information from all visible layers.
    • Field aliases or alternate display titles.
    • Fields can be hidden from default reports.
    • Fields containing URLs automatically hyperlinked.
    • Field level metadata supported.
    • Coordinate position reported in multiple coordinate systems.
    • Links can be shown in report constructed from field contents.
    • Open related reports instead of showing default report.
    • URL to related reports automatically built from field contents.
    • Selected set capability.   - add, subtract, filter etc.
    • Administrators can set default select, identify or edit layers
    • Administrators can specifiy whether or not to display the active layer icons
    • Administrators can allow or prevent users from changing active layers
  • Optional editing extension 
    • Data check-out/check-in
    • COGO polygon creation & editing
    • Attribute editing
    • Vertex editing with snapping, snap radius, & auto-fit
    • Split, union, delete overlap, combine, & intersect polygons

Integration and reporting

The flexible approach used in the design of IMF pays off when integrating it with other applications such as CRM.

  • Compatible with all versions of ArcIMS from 3.1 to 9.x. New updates released promptly when required
  • Compatible with ArcIMS image services and ArcIMS ArcMap services.
  • Can use any ArcIMS compatible data source eg shapefiles, ArcSDE, etc
  • Can use any existing ArcIMS image service or ArcIMS ArcMap map service
  • Can include layers from openGIS consortium Web Feature Servers (WFS), including ArcIMS
  • ArcIMS map service and WFS layers can be provided by different servers Compatible with reports in Crystal, ColdFusion, ASP, JSP, etc
  • Standalone maps can be called from other applications/websites
  • Startup scripts allow website or standalone map to be initialised using parameters from another application eg extent, visible layers, selected feature etc
  • Hyperlinks to external applications and/or reports from map layers (metadata) and/or individual features (reporting)
  • Compatible with reports written in ASP, JSP, .NET, Crystal, ColdFusion etc
  • Parameters such as selected feature(s) can passed to external applications in a variety of formats
  • Extract tool for saving features and/or attributes to a local shapefile, GML file, or Excel spreadsheet. 
  • Integration with
  • Database connectivity to insert selected record information in database for join filter.

Compatibility, performance and security

The architecture of IMF provides significant gains in performance and security when compared with common alternatives.

  • Platform independent pure Java / JSP application that ru ns on a variety of web servers and servlet engines on Windows, UNIX or Linux servers:
    • Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS)
    • Sun One (formerly iPlanet)
    • Apache HTTP server
    • Oracle OC4J
    • Oracle 9iAS
    • Apache Tomcat (recommended)
    • ServletExec
    • Resin
  • Web based. All data is retrieved and processed on the server before being sent to the client. Over most networks this is faster than a traditional desktop application such as mapExplorer or ArcView. It also means that far less powerful machines can be used as clients. 
  • IMF web pages contains only interface related code, meaning far less code has to be downloaded to the client machine than with some other approaches eg ESRI's HTML viewer. This can be particularly significant on the internet and in remote offices.
  • Server based approach means that all user input can be rigorously validated on the server, thereby reducing a range of security risks such as denial of service and sql injection.
  • Only the IMF server needs to commmunicate direclty with ArcIMS, thereby reducing the denial of service rislk associatied with allowing anonymous internet (HTML viewer) clients to communicate directly with ArcIMS 
  • IMF includes mechanisms that can be used to control the content and functionality that are available to particular groups of users
  • Can be integrated with existing user directories such as Microsoft Active Directory
  • Map limits can be set (maximum extent, minimum scale, etc.), thereby reducing the risk of denial of service
  • Administrator can allow individual layers to override map limits, thereby ensuring usability is preserved  while security and reliability are enhanced