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How to Visually Illuminate an Area of Interest

By John Nelson

Maps, of course, communicate an incredible amount of information. But sometimes this can be a liability⁠—each part of the map drawing as much attention as any other.  Often you want the map reader to focus their attention to a specific area of the map; the rest of the map can remain for context, but just have a more subdued appearance.

Here is one way to do this in ArcGIS Pro.

There are many flavors of this trick that you can use to get just the sort of hey-look-over-here sort of effect you need. The most important thing is to consider what, and where, the map’s job is and design it in a way so that its audience will look right where they ought without effort. Plus it looks pretty cool, and that counts for a lot!

Happy spotlighting! John

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Susan Carlson(@carlson1se)
March 26, 2020 10:35 am

This is great! How do I have these applications open directly to their own URLs and without the hub wrapper/banner? – Thanks

Susan Carlson(@carlson1se)
March 27, 2020 4:10 pm
Reply to  Susan Carlson

I added them as new items to AGO using friendly URLs. All good now.

Virginia Behm Chang(@virginia_sigtas-2)
April 22, 2022 11:33 am
Reply to  Susan Carlson

Hi, can you explain how do you do that?

Rebecca Lilja(@rlilja_usfs)
April 8, 2020 7:50 am

Hi! We tried to add a gallery of Storymaps (all created with the new story map builder) to our Hub Site and the “Explore” buttons will not launch the Storymap when we view the Hub page. Any tips or tricks?

Ariana Toth(@atothgwe)
July 2, 2020 1:04 pm

I really wish there was a way to make the gallery cards all be the same size. I’m displaying 6 cards on my site and two cards are much larger, like in the last image of your post. But the thumbnails I created are not meant to be displayed in those dimensions, so they get cut off and distorted.

Czapiga, Jason(@jason-czapigamaine-gov_maine)
July 22, 2020 12:56 pm
Reply to  Ariana Toth

I had the same issue. I was able to trick it by adding a blank text box element to the side of the cards and change the size of the text box until your thumbnails display properly…I found that this works well for many other sections as well to resize other elements.

Eddy Clark(@eddybaboy)
October 20, 2020 10:13 am

When a gallery has no content meeting display criteria, I’d like for the hub site to say so. Something like “No documents are available for review at this time.”

Pankaj Jamwal(@ago141866)
December 16, 2020 10:29 am

Hi,
I have created a survey using Collector for ArcGIS app. I was wondering how could I add/embed a link/path in ArcGIS Hub
so that our field staff can click that link which will take them directly to the Collector App.
Thanks

Virginia Behm Chang(@virginia_sigtas-2)
April 22, 2022 11:49 am

Just like Susan I want the aplications of the gallery open directly without the hub banner to the left side of the screen. How can I do that? Thanks

SMAS-Rio Adm.(@smds-adm)
May 2, 2022 8:03 pm

In the general settings of the Hub, in the “interactions” section, uncheck the “embedded apps” option. Hope this helps (sorry for the bad english – Google Translate).