On longer stories the story map screen gets so spread out that finding the chapter that you left off at can be troublesome. A good example would be 'The Gamer' ( https://chyoa.com/story/The-Gamer,-Chyoa-edition.12004/map ) on my screen any story with more than 41 chapters has everything after that point pushed off screen to the side. Normally, this isn't a big deal as it seems that most stories don't make it past ~50 chapters deep per branch, however, on those that do it can become an issue that makes navigating on the story map page more difficult than it needs to be. As a proposed solution, adding a chevron to the left of the expand/collapse option next to a chapters numerical signifier would resolve this, and, I believe, require a minimal adjustment period from a usability standpoint. From a functional stand point the chevron would simply function to negate the preceding depth for the chapter that it was selected on without touching anything above it or in a different thread. IE: if in the thread for chapter 11.2, 30 chapters down has a +150px depth increase before the chapter heading is listed, using the chevron would decrease that depth by 150px shifting everything below it in the same thread left by 150px; chapter 31 would start at +5px, and chapter 60 would start at +150px instead of +300 etc. However, all chapters in the branch for 11.3 nothing would change. Due to familial obligations, I won't be able to attempt to make the previously promised visual representation for at least another 10 days. This was a post I made and copied from a suggestion story posted by RicoLuis since I didn't realize the correct place to post this was here.
Hm, what about reducing the indenting from 30px per chapter to a lower amount when reaching a certain chapter depth. e.g. depth <= 15 chapters -> 30px depth <= 30 chapters -> 15px depth <= 60 chapters -> 7px depth <= 90 chapters -> 5px depth <= 150 chapters -> 3px I could also imagine a dynamic indent though I'm not sure how well it will work, especially on mobile.
I was scanning through this forum, and came across this thread: https://forum.chyoa.com/threads/suggestion-possible-improvement-for-story-maps.156/ it is basically asking for the same functionality, but describes the behavior/methodology differently. Putting it here for ease of access.
Here is a mock up of what I'm sort of meaning. I'm not an artist, so please excuse the plain text-only nature. Edit: The top half of the image is a mockup of how the story map currently works, the bottom includes the arrow to shift things over to the right.
That seems fine for PC users if that is at full screen and they don't have to ever scroll left and right. Can't imagine mobile users view on this.
That's very similar to the display I get on my mobile, and the issue I'm talking about (having to scroll left and right for days) is even more pronounced on a mobile device due to the smaller screen size. Adding the chevron would allow for a couple of taps to pull everything over to the visible area of the screen making story map navigation even easier for mobile devices I believe.