Storymap not loading on mobile device

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01-05-2022 06:55 AM
HelenCooper
Occasional Contributor III

Hi, 

I'm working on a storymap with a guided map tour of a feature class. 

It's working well on a desktop, but whenever I try to view it on a mobile phone I get the following message: 

"A problem repeatedly occurred on "https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/57c89105a29b4f0d941f4af64f042e6b?cover=false&play=true". "

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/57c89105a29b4f0d941f4af64f042e6b?cover=false&play=true

Any suggestions on what could be causing this would be very gratefully received, 

Thanks, 

Helen

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OwenGeo
Esri Notable Contributor

Hi @HelenCooper! I can reproduce the crash you are seeing. It looks like the content in your story is arranged in a way such that there is just too much data being loaded at the same time for the amount of memory on a phone to handle. There's a very long 3D guided tour followed immediately by a slideshow with maps/scenes.

StoryMaps progressively loads the content on the page as the reader scrolls through the story, and this usually prevents crashing. However, when a lot of heavy content (3D is especially data-intensive) appears in the story in a small space it can sometimes still crash the browser on mobile devices, which don't have as much memory resources as desktops/laptops.

It sounds like this story is still in-progress so it's not a "real" or final story yet. In a typical story, we don't normally see a tour immediately followed by a slideshow. There is typically a section of text between them introducing the next set of maps or media. I recreated a test story where I have a 3D tour, followed by several paragraphs of text and an image, and then a slideshow and it doesn't crash on my phone. Can you try fleshing out your in-progress story with a bit more content to see if you still run into this issue? We'll also look into this on our end to see if we can optimize the content loading any more.

I'd also suggest using the explorer tour grid layout for any tours with more than about 10 points. Having readers scroll through a guided tour of 50 points is not a great experience because it involves so much scrolling.

Hope this is helpful!

Owen Evans
Lead Product Engineer | StoryMaps

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OwenGeo
Esri Notable Contributor

Hi @HelenCooper! I can reproduce the crash you are seeing. It looks like the content in your story is arranged in a way such that there is just too much data being loaded at the same time for the amount of memory on a phone to handle. There's a very long 3D guided tour followed immediately by a slideshow with maps/scenes.

StoryMaps progressively loads the content on the page as the reader scrolls through the story, and this usually prevents crashing. However, when a lot of heavy content (3D is especially data-intensive) appears in the story in a small space it can sometimes still crash the browser on mobile devices, which don't have as much memory resources as desktops/laptops.

It sounds like this story is still in-progress so it's not a "real" or final story yet. In a typical story, we don't normally see a tour immediately followed by a slideshow. There is typically a section of text between them introducing the next set of maps or media. I recreated a test story where I have a 3D tour, followed by several paragraphs of text and an image, and then a slideshow and it doesn't crash on my phone. Can you try fleshing out your in-progress story with a bit more content to see if you still run into this issue? We'll also look into this on our end to see if we can optimize the content loading any more.

I'd also suggest using the explorer tour grid layout for any tours with more than about 10 points. Having readers scroll through a guided tour of 50 points is not a great experience because it involves so much scrolling.

Hope this is helpful!

Owen Evans
Lead Product Engineer | StoryMaps
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HelenCooper
Occasional Contributor III

Hi @OwenGeo , thanks so much for responding so quickly (I feel I'm on my way to being a frequent flyer on these forums at the moment!!). 

You're right, it's very much still in-progress at the moment.  The aim is for the story to run on auto-play and provide an animation - it's part of a wider project that we're working on in Experience Builder (here: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/95e2ca6befde4ae4809f7b9b7da70f1a/page/Home-Page/ ). 

I've removed the slide show as that isn't needed in the same story (that was a bit of an experiment), and I will experiment with simplifying the map that's used as the basemap, and let you know how I get on.  

I take your point about the explorer tour grid layout, and would usually agree, but as the aim of this project is a bit different to 'normal' I need the tour to stop at each point that's been added to the map individually. 

Thanks again, 

Helen

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OwenGeo
Esri Notable Contributor

@HelenCooper - Got it. Thx for sharing some more info.

Sounds like you are definitely pushing the limits by having so many moving parts in this project! I just want to caution you about embedding too many different things into a single page, especially if you are planning this to be used by people on mobile devices. Keeping things simple and focused will be important. Seems like you are doing a lot of testing, which is also a good idea.

Owen Evans
Lead Product Engineer | StoryMaps
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HelenCooper
Occasional Contributor III

Thanks @OwenGeo, definitely many moving parts and much pushing of limits going on! All good advice, and all noted, thank you.