There has been a long standing issue regarding custom Brics and their page / project attachments. If you use or develop custom Brics then the following may sound familiar.
- Duplicate custom Bric attachments.
- Missing custom Bric Attachments.
- Custom Brics that don’t function on some pages.
Over the years, these issues have come and gone, as we have issued fixes and patches. However, more recently these issues have reared their ugly head again.
The Cause
After a detailed investigation into the issues, various causes have come to light. At some point MacOS has adjusted how it is parsing the modified data (last modification date of an asset) that we store in these attachments in the Blocs project file. This has caused a range of issues, most notably the duplication of custom Bric attachments, which you may have encountered.
Some minor changes to the WKWebKit engine, which Blocs uses for the Design Canvas has also had contributing factors when custom Brics are moved around between Blocs and page areas, leading to missing custom Bric attachments and duplicates.
The Solution
As well as fixing the underlying issues and making this functionality more robust, we have reviewed the relationship between custom Brics and their respective page / project attachments and made some visual and functional improvements, which we hope will help to lower confusion and frustration in this area.
Page And Project Settings Improvements
Page and Project attachments are accessed via their respective setting windows. As of Blocs V5.1.4, attachment items now have visual indicators that help users identify if they are related to a specific custom Bric.
Custom Bric User Interface
If a custom Bric uses page or project attachments, as of Blocs V5.1.4, you will see a small section at the top of a custom Brics user interface that will list how many attachments the Bric is using and in which location they can be found (page or project settings). There is also a button for quick access to view these attachments.
If a custom Bric that uses attachments has missing attachments, this interface will adapt to inform a user of the problem, when the Bric is selected. This warning also includes a one-click fix button to re-implement the missing attachments for the Bric.
We still have various improvements to implement in the area, but if you develop custom Brics please take this new version for a spin and make sure everything is working correctly.
With these fixes and improvements, hopefully many will find custom Bric attachments, less frustrating.
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