Unresponsive/slow loading to edit my Story Map

[sdctchair]

Good afternoon, 

For a few days now my story map has been unresponsive. As I try to open the web page to edit it will not load, as such I have not been able to continue editing my story. I have had this issue on several different computers and locations, so I do not believe that it is an issue with my device or internet. 

I use several express maps in a side car format with a large number of points on each map (might this be presenting an issue?). 

Looking forward to hearing back. 

Thanks, 

Joanna

[mcolwin]

If I duplicate the first slide, I can "replace" the image, but if I delete the image and try to then add an image, map, etc. to this (now empty) slide, I get the same behavior of it not working.

[OwenGeo · Accepted solution]

@sdctchair @MegGaillard @FriendsMissRiv @annamo @Afie_lgeo @Curt_H @jduval @StevenArnold @MattiasEkström 

We just deployed the fix for the builder issue described in this thread. Please check your stories and let us know if you are still experiencing this problem.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to report this issue and share your stories here and to Esri Support. Having access to a lot of information about the stories that were experiencing this problem was key to us finding the cause and developing a fix.

[StevenArnold]

Thank you.  Works perfectly.

[MattiasEkström]

It works for me now, thanks for quickly deploying this fix!

[ASUM06]

Hello Owen,

My published story map often crashed when viewing it. It takes a long time for those web map contents to load. The story map is very unresponsive. I wondering if it is realted to the data size. Would you please have a look and see how we can solve it out? Thanks!

Here is my storymap link:

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/783c5bb69daa4f6bac1c81dded4becb1 

[OwenGeo]

Hi @ASUM06 -- I didn't have any issue viewing your story on my laptop, but when I viewed it on my phone it did crash when I got to the Accessibility Variables section.

It looks like the map you are using (ebe7e884f24d4c2ea7caaafa735edf69) has about three dozen layers (!), which is not a best practice. (It's also using a deprecated version of the canvas basemap.) And in the Accessibility Variables section you are using that same map on both sides of a swipe in multiple slides. This means all 36 or so of those layers in the map are being loaded up to 6 times, which is just too much for a phone browser to handle.

Even if a layer is not visible in your map, it still consumes memory resources. When there are an excessive number of layers, as there are in this case, it can crash the browser (especially on phones, which have fewer memory resources than a laptop or desktop computer).

Instead of using the same overloaded map multiple times across the story, I would recommend creating individual maps with the minimum number of layers needed for each place in your story. If it is also possible to eliminate or combine some layers in the basemap group layer (or maybe just use the canvas basemap, if possible?) that would also be a good practice to reduce the complexity of your maps. These actions should address the crashing issue on phones and other resource constrained devices.

Also it would be a good idea to update the canvas basemap so you are not using the deprecated layers. See Notification that old Esri Vector Basemaps will be retired in 2022 for more information.

[ASUM06]

Thanks Owen! I am going to separating layers into different web map to reduce loading time. However, one or two layers have a large data size, which may still exceed the memory. Will using filtering in web map help? Thank you.

[OwenGeo]

It's always helpful to use filters and/or scale dependency to minimize the number of features that are drawing at once. That is also just a good practice for map design so that you are helping your readers focus on what is important rather than bombarding them with too much information.

For this particular crashing issue you are seeing, however, the main load on the browser memory comes from having too many layers loading at once (regardless of how many features are being drawn).

[OwenGeo]

@ASUM06 - Also, I noticed that your swipes are simply providing readers with the option to look at clusters or pins. Typically clusters are for smaller scales and individual points are for larger scales, whereas swipes are used to compare two things at the same scale.

I'd recommend setting up clustering on your web maps so individual points simply appear when a reader zooms in to larger scales rather using swipes in your case. This will significantly reduce the number of maps and layers you need.

[FCOAdmin]

I seem to be having this same issue. StoryMaps has been sluggish for me (pictures not loading completely or the Story Editor not loading at all) and now it won't save changes. I've had these issues over a couple weeks now on different machines, different AGOL accounts, and different browsers. It definitely seems like a bug on Esri's end and it is very frustrating.