Latest Contributions by OwenGeo

Hi Mandy, Thanks for your question, and it's nice to hear your organization is putting story maps on its website! Story Maps do not use Flash, but they are responsively designed. If you open a story (like this Map Journal) and resize your browser (either just by dragging the window edge or using browser developer tools to simulate mobile device mode) you'll see the app layout change. You can find many of good examples of embedded and linked story maps in our Story Map Gallery to get ideas of how best to integrate the story map on your website. Just use the Format filters along the left sidebar to show only the Embedded or Linked examples. The best way to do this depends on your story -- some stories will work well in a smaller space while others look best full-screen. If your story looks best full-screen then we'd recommend using a simple screenshot or image from your story on your website and making that image a link that opens the full-screen story in another browser tab. If it works well in the smaller space then you can embed the live story in an <iframe> in your web page. If you do embed your story make sure you do some tests to make sure all sections of the story look and work well across a range of screen resolutions and browser window sizes. You'll find more tips on embedding story maps in websites in this blog post. Owen ... View more

Google+ and Facebook logins are currently supported only for Public accounts. Public accounts do not have the ability to host feature services, so you aren't able to publish layers directly from ArcMap. Depending on how large your layers are, you may be able to export them as shapefiles, ZIP them up, and add them to your map using the Add > Add layer from file button in the arcgis.com map viewer. Owen ... View more

Thanks for the info Andrew.  Cool story idea! It is possible to embed configurable web apps in a story map, so you could use the Filter app or Web AppBuilder and embed it in your story to let your audience perform the filters you described. You'd do this just like you've already embedded Map Series apps within another Map Series app (using the process outlined here: Embedding a Story Map within a Story Map | ArcGIS Blog). However, I always caution story map authors to make sure they really want to do this kind of thing. The best Story Maps are simple for the audience to use, and embedding GIS-style apps in a story can sometimes introduce complexity that negatively affects your audience's experience. If you are publishing this for a professional or tech-savvy audience then it is often ok to embed GIS apps, but if your audience is the "general public" or people in a non-technical field you may want to reconsider this approach. The Map Journal app has a specific feature called main stage actions that helps you lead your audience through a story by changing the appearance of the map (toggling layers with filters applied, etc.) without expecting them to figure out how to use a query widget or other GIS tools. Rather than having a series of tabs with all the different years you could tell a story about why this issue is important and then include a section for roofs, HVAC, etc. and have main stage action links in your story narrative for each of the year ranges. When a reader clicks on a link the map would update to show those schools. Then you could create some additional layers showing some of the filters you'd expect people to be interested in (like the one you described in your previous post). You could add one or more sections exploring these scenarios and give the audience your perspective on them since you are a subject matter expert in the data. If you still wanted to give people the chance to explore the data you could include a final section in the Map Journal that has an embedded Web AppBuilder app with the query widget you described. You could explain how to use the app in the side panel narrative. This way you've already walked someone through the data and several examples and then you can set them loose to do some exploration on their own if they are interested. Here's a blog post about main stage actions if you want to pursue that option: Using Story Map Journal Main Stage Actions | ArcGIS Blog Hope this is helpful! Owen ... View more

Hi Lea, Sorry it's not possible to rotate a map at this time; however, in the future when we update our apps to use the forthcoming 4.0 version of the ArcGIS API for JavaScript this may be possible with customization. One workaround you might want to try is to create a web scene from your map layers and embed that scene in your story map. You have much more control over the orientation/perspective of a scene than you do with a map. These two blog posts may be helpful if you want to try this: Using 3D web scenes in Story Maps | ArcGIS Blog Using 3D web scenes in Story Maps redux | ArcGIS Blog Owen  ... View more

We've published a blog about this issue here: Using custom HTML in Map Journal​. Also this blog was mentioned in comments above: Create buttons for Main Stage Actions using the style tag​ ... View more

Hi John, Sorry you are having trouble adding images to your story. Picasa does still exist so it does work today, but as you've heard Google is shutting Picasa down in favor of Google Photos, so if you are making a story that you want to be up for a long time that's not the best option. You should be able to use images in Google Photos, but you can't typically copy the URL from the address bar. Just right click the image, copy that image URL, and paste that in using the URL option for adding images. You'll also need to make sure your images are shared publicly. If you have access to another cloud file storage service like Dropbox you can store images for your story map there as well. Again, just make sure you've made the files public and copy the URL the service provides for your file. In the future we will be adding the capability for you to upload images right in the app builder that can be stored in ArcGIS and share the security of your story map. Owen ... View more

Hi Julio, Sure, you can use HTML tags to change those properties of your text. It involves code, but is very simple to do. Here are some links that show you the syntax of the tags you'll need to add. HTML font color Attribute HTML font size Attribute We are working on an update to Map Tour for the second half of this year and we hope to add easier text formatting tools at that time. Owen ... View more