Requirements for Printing Story Maps

[OwenGeo]

Hi Frank/Mahesh,

We have heard the request for printing story maps before and have discussed it, but we don't have any firm plans in this area.

It would be very helpful to us if you could please provide some more information about how you and your story map readers would use a print function.

• Who would be printing the map and for what purpose?
• Would you/they need to print a single section or would they want a printout of the entire story or need both options?
• Would they "print" to a PDF document or to make a paper/hard copy or both?
• Any other specific requirements that you can think of?

Owen

[FrankVignati]

Hi Owen

The users printing the map would be the public, we have a series tabbed story map for our zoning and future land use so there can be separate tabs for either map. That the user could print the map in extent on one tab to a pdf is what we would like.

[OwenGeo]

Thanks for the information, Frank!

I'm interested in learning more about the zoning maps that you'll publish. The legend can of course be added to a printout, but are the maps labeled? One of the challenges we see with printing story maps is that many web maps are often much less useful when they lose their interactivity. If you can't click to see a pop-up many of the features would be unknown to a reader looking at a paper print out.

Do you have a case where the maps are (or could be) authored in a way that they will be useful and contain the necessary reference information for a reader to make sense of a printed map?

Thanks again for your help!

Owen

[OscarMonell]

Hi Owen!

Thank's for including the printing capability in the Story Map Journal. Much appreciated!

Right now printing doesn't work in Internet Explorer. Is that expected behavior?

And as a further request, I belivie it would be of interest to have the option to reference a pdf-version instead.

Kristian Bergstrand‌ and the city of Helsingborg, Sweden are using this in a custom Map Journal: http://kartor.helsingborg.se/stadsplan/src/index.html?appid=6c25031e10dd44d290a00e1645b109f1 

[OwenGeo · Accepted solution]

Hi Oscar,

We'll look into the issue on IE. Thanks for reporting that.

You can use the browser's print options to print to a PDF. It's slightly different in each browser, but instead of choosing a printer you choose "Print to PDF."

If the author created their own PDF for the story, the "A Story Map" link in the header can be customized to link to the PDF.

Owen