Live Center Review

Challenges with mobile rendering – solved through the use of Live Center’s Extensions

One common challenge faced by customers is that features in traditional live blogging solutions are not developed to work well with mobile. One example is the sports scoreboard provided by ScribbleLive that communicates live updates from games.

The scoreboard is by default fully expanded to show a full-size team logo, team name, score, current period, audience, and players. When viewed on a desktop of a large tablet, the scoreboard works well because the available screen height allows all of this information to fit. But when viewed on a mobile, the default mode of having all content expanded means that most of the screen is filled, and users have to scroll past all of it to see any posts.

Live Center offers a brand new scoreboard Live Center’s Extensions that had three collapsible modes which default to a collapsed view. This provides a much better user experience by allowing readers to select if they want all the details, and more easily accessible to posts in the feed without having to scroll down further.

Lack of integration flexibility – Integration with customer’s CMS for more user-friendly workflow

Many older solutions do not allow easy creation of plugins and widgets to the CMS where live blogs are ultimately handled by customers. Live Center has a broad range of APIs that allows integration with customers’ CMS. One example is the Live Center widget for Infomaker’s Digital Writer CMS which allows customers to simply drag-and-drop a live feed that has been created in Live Center from a list, without the need to use any script or ID. Users simply search for a channel they want to include and drag it into the article.

Cluttered editor interface – Ability to customize editor features & tools

A common issue from customers is that the interface and editor in other liveblogging solutions are very cluttered with too many impressions and features. Every customer has a different need and uses different features, which often means that many of the buttons, fields, and tools in an editor are rarely or never used. The effect traditionally brings too much complexity to the interface.

Live Center allows customers to hide features from the interface that are not widely used, providing a simplified layout and with reduced impressions. Examples of these can be extensions that are not needed, features such as comments, and formatting and media options. Live Center works with their customers to understand what features they need, and the rest is hidden from their editor to make the solution more streamlined. If they decide to add them, Live Center can easily unhide them again.

Additionally, Live Center has a simple editor interface with two main columns, one for the Editor with text formatting and tools, and one for the preview and feed of published posts. This layout results in much less scrolling on a tablet or mobile devices.