It’s great to read that Esri is working on features and basemaps to include within ArcGIS.com to support data visualization.     Sometimes the map isn’t the focus; sometimes the data is the focus.  A few weeks ago, Bern Szukalski wrote an article for the Esri Insider blog that spoke about Esri’s efforts to create new basemaps including basemaps for data visualization purposes.   I think this is a great move for Esri.   Last fall, I suggested such a muted basemap via the ideas.arcgis.com portal, so I was quite excited to hear it is in the works.

A post today, also by Bern, explained a new feature within ArcGIS.com to allow the user to mute the basemap by adjusting it’s display transparency.    The HunchLab team stumbled upon this idea a few months back and it’s been a great way to use the existing topographic basemap.    In our demo instance of HunchLab, we are using the ArcGIS.com Topographic tiles set to a transparency of 60%.   You can see what it looks like below.

Kudos to Esri — keep the basemap options coming!