Overview:
When viewed in a mobile browser, audio uploaded and hosted on esri servers is interpreted as a ¨Live Broadcast¨ instead of as a discrete recording that can be play, paused, and scrubbed. Meanwhile, audio hosted on other third party sites is interpreted as a discrete recording as it should be.
For example, the top audio file is hosted by esri, while the bottom is hosted by a third party:
This idea is to suggest that audio hosted by esri for use in Cascade story maps be changed so that it is interpreted as a normal recording, not a live broadcast.
Details:
- I have noticed this behavior on iOS and android mobile devices (specifically iPhone 6s, iPad Pro) on both Safari and Chrome. This behavior does not occur on any desktop browsers that I have noticed.
- On top of the look and user experience issue presented by having audio interpreted as a live broadcast, it presents playback issues as well. Sometimes the audio does not play all the way through, other times it does not play at all, and other times it plays fine.
- I currently have a case open to address playback issues and we have discovered that the issues arise from how esri's servers serve out the audio such that mobile browsers interpret them as live broadcasts, which somehow affects caching of the audio files that results in playback being interrupted or not working all-together.
- If you would like to test this for yourself, here is a link to a dummy story map I'm using to test. I'd love to hear if you can replicate the issue in the comments.