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March 2023 - Product Updates - Swing

Significant performance improvements

 Recent enhancements of the Swing application have been aimed at offering users a range of functionality comparable to that of the Windows client and that 'feature parity' has now been largely achieved.

In this latest release the Engineering team has turned its attention to improving the performance of the app, especially in critical operations like opening templates and reports in progress. While it is clear that a web application running in a browser will never reach the performance levels of a fat Windows client, the user experience of a web application can be delivered in a way that gives the end user the impression that it is as instantaneous and responsive as a full Windows application.

A complete refactoring of the core editor using the latest web technologies has allowed us to implement a user experience with vastly improved performance and loading time.

Internal performance tests indicate that the 'time to work' before the app responds to user input has been cut by up to 85%, while the time to fully load a template or report has been reduced by 50% or more*.

In practice this means that, upon opening a report, regardless of its size or complexity, the end-user will have the impression that the report has been fully loaded in seconds, and will be able to start working on the content almost immediately.

The UI block while loading the editor has been completely removed, and the reduced total loading time of the report also offers improvement in the single story editor. Sections can also be edited while the report is still loading, and the priority of the sections loading will change dynamically based on user demand.


*Tests performed on an Eidosmedia Express Baseline environment hosted in AWS with standard performance. Installations with extensive and complex local customizations, while still benefiting hugely from the performance update, may not in some cases reach these levels of performance gains.

Creating Report Compilations in Swing

Report compilations are documents created from a number of separate reports.

Swing 5.2023.03 introduces the possibility to create compilations in Swing. Having located the reports through queries or using the candidate browser, users can drag and drop them into the report compilation directly in the editorial workspace.

The order of reports within the compilation can then be rearranged by dragging and dropping them in the sidebar, making use of a simple and intuitive user interface.

Compilation reports can also be mixed, so users can author the front page of the compiled report to tailor the compilation to a specific client or group, and then link published reports into the same document.

The individual reports making up the compilation can be opened in a new browser tab directly from the representation in the editor. The entire report compilation can be previewed in PDF format in Swing and in various digital formats via Cobalt rendering.

Replace a Single Crop in Picture Desk

A hugely useful new feature has been added to Swing 5.2023.03 in the picture desk - users are now able to replace an individual crop of an image within the Edit Image context.


This means that an editor can easily choose a different image for the homepage lead compared to the article view on the front end, or choose different images for vertical and horizontal devices for example.

Update Inline Media in Channel Copies in Side-by-Side View

For digital media use cases, starting from Swing 5.2023.03, it is now possible to drag and drop inline media from one channel copy to another in side-by-side view. This means channel copies for different digital channels or languages can be updated directly from the editor easily and intuitively by the end user without having to locate the inline media and inserting it into the channel copy.