Ottawa County Michigan Offers ESRI Silverlight Public Crime Map

The app includes a legend (with legend in the title) which not only reveals what the symbols on the map mean, but also the two letter codes for each type of crime searchable in the query box.

I’m not sure at all what *Incidents are relative to the point on the Map* means. That statement is above the legend. Perhaps it means the location data are “fuzzed up” a bit?

I was unable to produce a query that put dots on the map. The error message told me that either there were no results OR there was an error in the input data. I was unable to determine what was causing my problem.

The app has the typical toolbar of giant icons - each of perform an operation or open a dialog box. I do like that only one dialog box can be open at a time, but I found it hard to shut any single one down - without opening one to replace it. Said another way, there’s no “x” or “close” on the dialog boxes. One other interface concern in the query dialog (aka Incident Search - with a police map icon on the toolbar): the Map Incidents button, which means, “go do the query” is not distinguished in any way from the Clear Search or Clear Map buttons.

A “block of text” discussion of how to use the app pops up at start up - but I could not find a way to get back to this “help” once in the app.

I hope this feedback will help those behind the app to improve it. My setup: Mac OSX, Safari, Silverlight already installed.

- Holland Sentinel (I reported to the paper that it had a bad link to the app in its coverage.)