Product updates

Maglr Update 2020 (1 of 3)

October 19, 2022
Maglr Update 2020 (1 of 3)

August 2020 - We have worked hard from home and in the office to make improvements to our platform. And a lot has changed since our last update, that’s why we will be sharing and explain all changes in a series of three articles. Read the first part of the updates here.

Summary of updates in this article:

  • New navigation interfaces
  • Better scroll performance Pro pages
  • Cookie consent
  • Publication subscription
  • Push notifications and Zapier integration
  • Navigation help tooltip
  • Upcoming accessibility update (WCAG)

Updated navigation interfaces & settings

The publication environment is the interface surrounding your digital publication. With this interface, readers can navigate through the pages, access the side menu for additional options or switch to different editions. 

With this update, the underlying technology has been renewed completely where the navigation loads faster, is indexed quicker by search engines and can be configured to every detail. From the dashboard settings, you can choose between several menu variations where color, menu options and typography are adjustable. There are six navigation types to choose from:

  • Classic interface (default)
    A simple interface with a bottom navigation bar and a separate overview page.
  • Page name menu interface
    Same as the classic interface, with the name of the page displayed.
  • Minimal interface menu
    Publication with minimal interface design, displaying only a menu icon and navigation arrows.
  • Text menu interface
    The page names are displayed on the navigation bar to go directly to the specific page.
  • Dots menu interface
    Suitable for publications where you want to display the progress. Hover over the timeline to navigate to pages.
  • Stories menu interface
    Navigation interface similar to the popular social media stories feature but without the timer.

An easier way to set-up your navigation interface

You can now also fully customise your navigation interface through the dashboard settings. To configure your navigation environment we created a new module where it’s easier to make changes. A visual inspector will directly show you how the interface will look like.

This is what you can change in the interface from the settings:

  • Overview pages
  • Navigation arrows
  • Menu types
  • Icons & additional side menu options
  • Colours & typography 
  • Text & translations
  • Add page progress bar

More SEO improvements

To make sure search engines are indexing your publications we keep improving the way we present this data to them. With this update, we improved the structure of the pages, added additional meta headers and additional options like Google Schema. In Maglr publications, Schema markup is code that is automatically put in publications to help the search engines return more informative results for users queries in the search engine result pages. These functionalities are automatically added to every page of your project. Keep in mind that you can support indexing by filling in the metadata per project of the page via the Maglr dashboard. See the full list on how to optimize Maglr content for SEO.

Better scroll performance Pro pages

Without getting too technical, we have improved the performance of scrolling through pages that are created with our Maglr Pro editor. When you are creating a project in the Pro editor, the canvas you are working on is the ‘body’ of your publication. This body contains elements such as texts, images and shapes that can trigger animations. The scroll method used to ‘read’ every single element on this body when you are scrolling down a page. But now the scroll method is defined by reading the body that will trigger animations, meaning the scroll animations will display more smoothly.

Activate a cookie consent

By default, Maglr is compliant with the GDPR legislation. You can now add a cookie permission pop-up where a visitor will need to give his consent. Without consent, Maglr publications aren’t allowed to play a YouTube/Vimeo video or store data without Google Analytics IP address anonymization. You can also change the default cookie consent message to create an alternative cookie description along with a link to an external privacy policies document. In case you are running your own corporate consent manager you can use Google Tag Manager to integrate this manager inside your publication. Or ask our developers for a custom integration. Read more about our cookie consent settings.

Show an optional help tooltip

Tooltips are small, interactive, textual hints for mainly graphical elements. These tooltips often pop-up when you are using icons to trigger an action for the first time. Tooltips will give clarification on the icon’s function. During the first visit of a Maglr publication, your visitors will receive a small pop-up with a short explanation of how the navigation buttons and menu works. You can activate and customize the contents through the text settings.

Let visitors subscribe to a publication

Offer your readers the option to subscribe to your publication by mail or receive push notifications of future editions. This feature is free for the users and without any charges unless you publish gated content.  

By activating this option your visitors can subscribe through the navigation tab ‘Subscribe’ in the side menu. You can optionally activate a tooltip where visitors will receive a notification on the second page of your publication to subscribe.

Subscribe to email

Visitors will be asked for their name and email. This information will be directly sent to the configured mail address in your dashboard setting. We are not storing any user data on our platform. In case you would like to save this information directly in tools like Mailchimp or Excel, use the Zapier integration. With Zapier you are able to redirect this user data to your favourite tool of choice.  

Activate push notifications (Desktop)

Viewers of your publication now also have the option to subscribe to your upcoming publications with push notifications. A push notification is a handy way to keep readers informed about new updates in addition to your newsletter. This web notification is a small pop-up window with a custom text and a link to the publication on desktop & (Android) smartphones. 

Once a reader is subscribed, this visitor is anonymously added to your dashboard. The new module (available through the dashboard) lets you see you how many users are subscribed on the specific domain name. You will now also have the option to send them a short message with a link. If visitors click on the link in the notification, they will be redirected to your publication. From the statistics in the dashboard, you can see the results of how much traffic originated from these messages.

Upcoming accessibility update

Because our Maglr users are working for a variety of organisations all over the world, the content they produce with our content creation platform needs to meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). These guidelines provide a single shared standard for web content accessibility for individuals, organizations, and governments internationally. The WCAG documents explain how to make web content more accessible to people with disabilities. In the upcoming update, we’ll go into details on how content that is made with Maglr complies with the guidelines.

This is the first of three articles about the series of updates that have been made to the Maglr content creation platform. Login to the dashboard to start creating or request a 14-day demo trial to discover the features of our platform.

Design interactive stories
View examples
The platform
8
minute read
Product updates

More articles