Difference between Story Map builder and Story Map Cascade

FredDominguez1

Hi, what is the difference between Story Map Builder and Story Map Cascade? I am creating a data story map and with Cascade, I like creating text over the slide but the side cars have limited options. With building a story map I like the many options but I can't create text over the slides. How would I be able to do both?

thanks

oevans_storymaps

@FredDominguez1 -- Story Map Cascade is one of our classic storytelling templates. These have been extremely popular and our community has created over 1 million stories using these templates. The classic templates were originally released several years ago and are no longer under active development. They are still supported, but are on the path to eventual retirement.

The new story builder is ArcGIS StoryMaps, which is Esri's current-generation storytelling product. Instead of a set of separate templates with different capabilities, it is a single, modern, unified builder that allows you to combine different storytelling elements in a single story. All of our team's development resources are focused on adding to this product and improving it's capabilities. Using ArcGIS StoryMaps is recommended for new projects.

In ArcGIS StoryMaps, you can create slides with text over them just like you would in Cascade. Just add a sidecar block and be sure to choose the floating panel layout. You can use the panel settings to adjust the appearance and position of the panel on each slide and even add map actions to the narrative panel (something that wasn't possible in Cascade). Check out this sidecar tutorial for more information. If there's something else specific that the floating panel doesn't do that you were expecting, please provide details.

For more information about how you can use ArcGIS StoryMaps to recreate similar experiences from other classic templates and the timeline for the retirement of the classic templates, see Moving to ArcGIS StoryMaps.