Latest Contributions by RupertEssinger

The images you are referencing directly via URLs are really large and cause the very slow load speed. For example this one is 4800×2460 resolution and over 6 megabytes. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/49204012/StoryMaps/AjuscoXitle.jpg We'd recommend putting your images into a Flickr album instead and then using that Flickr album to create your story map. When you use the Story Map Tour Import function and point to photos in Flickr, the Story Map Tour will automatically request images from Flickr of the best size for the story, and you'll get better performance. Alternatively you could upload the images into ArcGIS Online and choose the option to make the images smaller, or resize them first yourself to be closer to 1000 x 750 which is a good target size. ... View more

Hi Cassandra You can include HTML tags in Story Map Tour captions. Just type them in or include them in caption text that you load in if you are using a CSV file. Can't open your link because it is not shared publicly but I'm guessing that's the app you are using. What Tim is saying is that there are several different Story Map apps we offer: Apps | Story Maps and we need to know which one people are using in order to help out. Here's an example of a Story Map Tour where HTML was used to format the caption text: ​ ​ and here are the HTML tags inserted in the captions to format them and add a hyperlink: Along India Street between Cedar and Hawthorn you'll find almost all of Little Italy's restaurants and shops. One of the newest restaurants is this fish place inside a converted hardware store. You'll never see it empty like in this photo though because it has been jam-packed since day one. The brown wall on the left is covered in tiny model piranha skulls.  <a href="http://ironsidefishandoyster.com/" style="color:red" target="_blank">Website</a><br><hr><font size="2">Neighborhood: <B>Little Italy</B><br>1654 India Street between Cedar and Date</font><br><font size="1" color="Grey"><i>Photo: Courtesy of Ironside Fish and Oyster / Zack Benson</i></font> That is more HTML formatting than you probably need but it's a good example of what you can do. The example above is of course quite a lot of HTML to have to type into every caption, especially if you change your mind afterwards and want to tweak the look! But you can automate this easily. if you don't want to manually enter HTML. I used the Import From CSV function in the Advanced panel in the Story Map Tour's Welcome dialog to automate the process using Microsoft Office Excel. I created an Excel spreadsheet (here's a link that opens it for you to look at) that contains the set of fields that the Map Tour expects, plus some additional fields (DESC, ADDRESS, NEIGHBORHOOD, and PHOTO_CREDIT) that the Map Tour doesn't use but in which I store the various text strings that I want to appear in my DESCRIPTION field, which is the field that the Map Tour uses from the file for each pic's caption. I then used the CONCATENATE function in Excel to define the DESCRIPTION field by concatenating those additional fields together along with text strings containing the HTML tags I want to use.Here's the formula (it is pretty scary looking): =CONCATENATE(B2,"  <a href=""",F2,""" style=""color:red"" target=""_blank"">Website</a><br><hr><font size=""2"">Neighborhood: <B>",D2,"</B><br>",C2,"</font><br><font size=""1"" color=""Grey""><i>Photo: ",I2,"</i></font>") but in Excel you just define it once, then fill it down for each row in the table. In this way if you change your mind and want to try out different styling, you can just tweak the formula and re-apply it in your table. Finally save your Excel file, then save it again as a CSV and then upload it into the Map Tour Builder to create your tour. You can try that with the Excel file that I link to above. GIS professionals can also do the same procedure but using a shapefile or feature layer instead of an Excel file to assemble a CAPTION field from various attributes, and then publish a web map containing that layer as a Story Map Tour. Rupert PS. For a tip about including hyperlinks in captions, see also this blog post ... View more

Yes, while Story Map Tour can handle pics of any size and shape, for best results (both visuallly and to provide lots of space for your caption without it covering a lot of your pic), use landscape orientation images, ideally at 4:3 aspect ratio (for example 1000 pixels wide by 750 pixels is a good target size). Your photo is a very narrow portrait orientation that will get scaled to fit quite small in the Story Map tour: https://photos.smugmug.com/National-Parks/Zion-National-Park/i-hnt6pBR/3/O/20150418_123611.jpg Also for the best results, we recommend using photos that are all the same size and shape.  You don't have to, but it makes Story Map Tours look nice and polished: http://story.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapTour/?appid=d5b2c90d8a53466f9c3efb0f25d13325 Rupert For some  more tips, see: Improve your chance of winning the Esri Storytelling With Maps Contest | ArcGIS Blog ... View more

Thanks for pointing this out M.M.A. We've retired that story but inadvertently left in the Story Maps Gallery and as a public item in ArcGIS Online. We'll remove it from the gallery and unshare the public item. Rupert ... View more