Skip to content

Run a Tour Standalone

Using a tour standalone simply means running it in a browser all by itself (as opposed to running a tour that is embedded in a web page). All you need to run a tour standalone is a browser and the tour's URL. Learn about tour URLs.

How to run a tour standalone in a browser
  • Open a browser window
  • Type or paste the tour's URL into the address bar

How to run a tour standalone from the Tour Builder

You must have first published a tour to run it standalone from the Tour Builder.

  • From the Tour Preview screen:

    • Click the tour's URL that appears in the Tour Builder header
  • From the Tour Manager screen:

    • Click the tour's URL that appears in the upper right
  • From the Tour Library screen:

    • Click the arrow icon that appears below the tour's thumbnail

A tour is considered to be standalone when one of the following is true. The tour is:

  • Run from https://tour.mapsalive.com or run from the tour's folder when hosted on your own server.
  • Embedded in a containing web page directly within the <body> tag like the embed code in the code-snippets. If the embed code is within another tag, such as a <div>, that is within the <body> tag, the tour is not considered to be standalone.

Standalone Advantages

Running a tour standalone is a quick and easy way to see how your tour looks and behaves. You can change the width and/or height of the browser, and run the tour on various mobile devices, to see how the tour looks on different screen sizes.

A tour running standalone in the Edge browser

Responsive Standalone Tour

A standalone tour will grow or shrink to best fit the available browser area. If it's a Classic tour that uses a tiled layout and the browser becomes very narrow, the tour will automatically switch to use a stacked layout. To learn more about responsive behavior, see the section on responsive tours.

Supported Browsers

You can run a tour standalone in recent versions of any modern web browser, like Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge, on a desktop PC or Mac, and on a mobile device browser. MapsAlive tours will not run in older browsers like IE (Microsoft Internet Explorer).

Anyone can use your tour in a browser without having to install an app or any other software.

Small Mobile Devices

Interactive maps that are run standalone on small mobile devices like phones, appear and behave differently than on desktop computers and large mobile devices like tablets. To learn more, see the section on using a tour like a mobile app.