Chapter 1
This book shares a very good quality with the book from 291 which is that they both are able to provide very thorough explanations of somewhat complex topics, while keeping it concise. The first chapter discusses the first stages of Web GIS and its evolution to the modern cloud-based service. It also discusses the purpose behind Web GIS and its unique place in different GIS systems. In addition it makes a point to examine the ways in which Web GIS has kept up with technological advancements. I appreciate how much of an emphasis is placed on the social aspect of Web GIS.
Chapter 2
Chapter two opened with explaining to the reader what feature layers are. Although I did not explicitly need to learn this again because of my experience in 291, it again does an amazing job as always of maintaining concise, clear explanations. The main focus of this chapter is to have the reader learn how to create and use hosted layers. The process of creating different layers and maps in Web GIS is very similar to the Desktop version, however it is much more polished than the actual software itself, which I guess makes perfect sense to be accessible and user-friendly.
Application
An application for the parcel dataset from the Delaware County database is creating a continuous timeline of the most recently sold parcels to the possibly never sold parcels. This could be useful to city planners and community organizers in spatializing the places in the county that have high levels of generational wealth.