The Application class provides a number of static members allowing you to reference the application that an add-in is running inside of. You can get a reference to the current ArcGIS Explorer application from within an add-in by referencing the Application class; from this you can use the static property ActiveMapDisplay to get a reference to the current MapDisplay object, from where you can drill down into the map and its contents.

Several new members have been added to the Application class for the 1500 release:

• The Version property returns the version number of the Explorer application.
• The IsUsingApplicationConfiguration and ApplicationConfigurationPath properties allow you to determine if Explorer is running with a custom application configuration and if so, the path to it.
• You can now create a new document or save an existing document using the NewDocument and SaveDocument methods respectively. You can also determine if there are unsaved changes using the IsDocumentDirty property. A new overload has been added to the LoadDocument method to allow you to suppress some of the dialogs that may get shown as the document opens. The DocumentPath property returns the path to the map document.
• There is a ColorScheme property and a ColorSchemeChanged event which allows the applications color scheme to be managed.
• The GetBasemaps method allows you to return a read-only collection of Basemaps, comprising the set of Basemaps currently available to the user.