The ArcPad Team Blog

Unofficial stuff from the team behind the World's leading mobile GIS platform

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Where did my extension go?

Existing users of ArcPad may have a ‘oh no, its gone’ moment when they first open ArcPad 8, but in the words of the great Douglas Adams, DONT PANIC.

With every improvement, enhancement and added feature, we find we are taking up more and more space on the tiny devices that we target. Removing features is near impossible, but inevitably, not everyone uses everything. In ArcPad 8, to give a ‘faster’ initial experience, we have intentionally turned off some of the less used extensions when you install ArcPad to a Windows Mobile device. You can easily turn these back on.

The extensions that are ‘off’ by default are:

  • BMP
  • CADRG
  • Earthmate
  • GIF
  • Laser Rangefinder (all of them)
  • MrSID
  • PLGR
  • PNG
  • TSIP

To turn the extensions on:

  1. in ArcPad select ‘Advanced Settings’
  2. choose the ‘Extensions’ tab
  3. check the box next to the extension you wish to turn on
  4. select ‘OK’
  5. close and restart ArcPad.

You must close and restart ArcPad whenever you make a change to the extensions page. These changes are saved in the ExtensionPrefs.apx stored in the My ArcPad folder. To return to the default settings, you can simply delete the ExtensionPrefs.apx in your My ArcPad folder. Next time you open ArcPad, ArcPad will create a new ‘default’ ExtensionPrefs.apx for you.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

ArcPad 8 forum is ready for use

The ESRI ArcPad forum has now been updated to include ArcPad 8 topic areas. This is the best place for people to post questions and comments that are likely to incur discussion. Comments on this blog, although welcome, are hard to search and reference a few days after they are made (let alone long into the future). If your question is related specifically to a blog article, feel free to start a thread on the forum and reference it (ie: add the url) in a comment on the blog.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

What's New in ArcPad 8 Podcast

Elvin and I recorded a "What's New in ArcPad 8" podcast during the ESRI Developer Summit in Palm Springs last month. The podcast is now live on the ESRI podcast page:

http://www.esri.com/news/podcasts/audio/speaker/staff_lange_ap8.mp3

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Thursday, April 09, 2009

Nomad Firmware update strongly recommended when using ArcPad 8

Trimble / TDS Nomad users are strongly encouraged to update the firmware on their device before installing and using ArcPad 8. The firmware (version 1.0.4) can be downloaded from:

http://www.tdsway.com/support/nomad/software_updates/BF_1337


This firmware update significantly improves performance of the device with ArcPad 8 and resolves a number of issues raised with previous versions of ArcPad (eg: error when editing data on a storage card).

Wednesday, April 08, 2009

ArcPad 8 is now available online



ArcPad 8 is now available to download at:

http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcpad/download.html

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