Updating Design Editor

• 6 minutes to read

Aurigma updates Customer's Canvas on a regular basis. Once a new version is released, it appears in your account in My Licenses & Downloads. You may want to test new features of the Design Editor and see how they can improve your project. This topic will help you ensure a smooth transition to the new version of the editor.

Important

When you need to run both old and new versions of the Design Editor, run them in separate application pools.

If you customized a UI theme for earlier versions, it may become incompatible with new versions of the Design Editor.

Prerequisites

You must install the Design Editor on a server that meets the System requirements. If you are installing this application to a clean Windows Server, make sure you have installed the following components:

• IIS installed with ASP.NET 4.5 or higher (server roles .NET Extensibility 4.5 and ASP.NET 4.5).
• Microsoft .NET Framework 4.8 or higher.
• Both Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable Package x86 (latest supported) and Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable Package x64 (latest supported).

Update Procedure

Let's assume you have installed the Design Editor as described in Installing Design Editor.

If the installation is made in accordance with the recommendations, the old version is installed in a folder, for example, D:\inetpub\cc\design-editor\7.1.0 and the address of the application is https://www.example.com/cc/design-editor/7.1.0

To install a new version, say 7.1.20, you need to:

1. Install a new app in D:\inetpub\cc\design-editor\7.1.20.
2. Merge custom strings from \cc\design-editor\7.1.0\Configuration\translations.json to the new version.
3. Copy other configuration files from the old version (in the \cc\design-editor\7.1.0\Configuration folder) to the new version.
4. (Optional) If the configuration format was changed (new keys, renamed keys), make the appropriate changes to the configuration.
5. Configure the App Pool according to the requirements.

After that, the new version will be available at https://www.example.com/cc/design-editor/7.1.20

To route traffic to the new address, you must update the base address of the editor in your code. As an alternative, you can use a virtual directory in IIS or other tools, and use a permanent address, for example, https://www.example.com/cc/design-editor/stable

Now, both versions will be running on your server, although traffic will go to only one. You can keep the old version for a while to be able to roll back quickly. However, the following considerations should be kept in mind:

• Accumulating many old versions is not very reasonable, since each takes up resources (for example, App Pools), and they need to be taken into account when organizing Backups.
• The format of state files may change in the new version. This version will be able to consume the old state files, but the old version will not be able to consume the new state files. So, as soon as customers have started using the new version en masse, rollback opportunities disappear.

Version-specific upgrading instructions

Since the Design Editor introduced significant changes in 6.0.0, 5.33.0, 5.5.0 and 5.1.0, you must perform additional steps to upgrade through these versions.

If you now run, for example, Design Editor 5.0, you can upgrade through these versions in one go.

6.0.0

Using System Fonts

Design Editor 6.0 has stopped using systems fonts. Now, you must store all the fonts available to your users in the asset folder defined in the FontDirectory configuration parameter.

After you have unzipped the new version and restored the old configuration files, you must run the Font Migration Tool to find and copy system fonts used in your products and configs.

Using Classic Text Engine

All types of text elements now support rich formatting and can be edited right on the canvas using the new WYSIWYG text engine. However, the new engine does not support some features yet, and you can still enable the Rich text editor and text pop-up boxes to edit such features.

After you have restored your old configuration files, you can set the LegacyTextEngineEnabled parameter to true in Aurigma.DesignAtoms.config.

5.33.0

In version 5.33, we have changed the way we define the bleed zone and print area size. Earlier, if you wanted to create a 3.5x2" business card with 1/8" bleed, you created a 3.75x2.25" design and put a safety line inside it. But now, when you create a 3.5x2" design, the bleed zone will expand outside the design.

This may result in changing the product size and unnecessary safety lines. If you encounter this, you can either rework the design and change the Bleed and Slug settings or enable the old behavior. In the latter case, set LegacyIdmlBleedParsingEnabled to True in Aurigma.DesignAtoms.config.

5.5.0

After you have restored your old configuration files, in \Configuration\AuthSettings.config, find:

<route
    name="Color convertor API"
    *path="api/ColorConvertor/{action}/{color}/{id}"
    methods="POST"
    authRequired="false"
    unsafeHttpMode ="enabled"
/>

and replace it with:

<route
    name="Color convertor API"
    *path="api/ColorConvertor/{action}/{color}"
    methods="POST"
    authRequired="false"
    unsafeHttpMode ="enabled"
/>

5.1.0

Upgrade through 5.1.0 requires additional changes only if you enabled the auto-start provider. In this case, replace the <serviceAutoStartProviders> node in %WINDIR%\System32\inetsrv\config\applicationHost.config with the following:

<serviceAutoStartProviders>
    <add name="CcAutoStartProvider" type="Aurigma.DesignEditor.CustomersCanvasInitialization, Aurigma.DesignEditor" />
</serviceAutoStartProviders>

Troubleshooting

Some fonts are missing in your products

When products are loaded to the editor or rendered to print files, fonts, which were available before, get missed after the upgrade.

Solution

This may occur if the products refer to system fonts. Since Design Editor 6.0 has stopped using them, use the FontMigrationTool to scan your products for references to system fonts and copy those fonts to the application's folder.

In My Licenses & Downloads, you can find the Font Migration Tool that helps you analyze state files, templates, and mockups and copy the system fonts used in those files to the asset folder.

To run this tool:

1. Unzip FontMigrationTool from the distribution package.
2. In the App.config file, find <appSettings> and replace the default settings with the folder paths where you store the assets.
3. Run FontMigrationTool.exe and follow the instructions in readme.md.

To ensure that print files use the correct fonts, you can disable the font substitution feature in AppSettings.config.

Rich text editor opens for some text elements

Some text elements can be edited on the canvas, although the Rich text editor may open for others.

Solution

All types of text elements now support rich formatting and can be edited right on the canvas using the new WYSIWYG text engine. However, the new engine does not support some features yet and can open the Rich text editor and text pop-up boxes to edit such features. if you want to make this behavior consistent or just enable the old text engine, you can set the LegacyTextEngineEnabled parameter to true in Aurigma.DesignAtoms.config.

Size of products based on InDesign templates changed

Old IDML templates with defined bleed and slug areas open with a different size.

Solution

The way of defining the bleed zone has changed in version 5.33, bringing the user experience closer to Adobe InDesign and other professional tools.

To fix this issue, you can either change the product size manually to comply with the new approach or use the LegacyIdmlBleedParsingEnabled parameter to return to the old approach. You can set this parameter to true in Aurigma.DesignAtoms.config to load IDML templates with bleed and slug areas as it was implemented in version 5.32.