Bug: Assets Panel fails to refresh when draggin in assets from Explorer

[Peter Werner]

When dragging files from Explorer into the Assets panel, the interface does not refresh until another action is performed that can trigger a UI update, such as reordering subcategories, dragging an element in from a document, deleting an existing asset or similar.

Moreover, the panel can get slow, such as when dragging elements from one subcategory to another (which by the way can get tedious because there is no way to multi-select items) or deleting items. Even just dragging to reorder subcategories can cause a lag of one or more seconds after the mouse is released.

Designer Version 2.4.2 on Windows 10

[walt.farrell]

1 hour ago, Peter Werner said:

Moreover, the panel can get slow,

That may depend on how many assets you have installed, and how big your assets.propcol file has become. This FAQ will help you locate that file:

 

[Peter Werner]

Thank you for your reply!

The assets.propcol file is currently around 124 MB, so not giant considering that it's not uncommon for even just a simple icon pack to be up to 15 MB.

In my case it's 6 smaller asset packs averaging maybe 5 MB each plus two larger ones I put together from an existing library of material, one 10 MB and one about 56 MB. Even without those two, the panel never felt really snappy. It is probably safe to assume that it's common for a heavy user of the Assets feature to be working with a library at least this large, if not significantly larger.

I suspect that something time consuming like rebuilding all thumbnails or moving a lot of data on disk gets triggered every time an operation is performed in the panel.

[Return]

2 hours ago, Peter Werner said:

When dragging files from Explorer into the Assets panel, the interface does not refresh until another action is performed that can trigger a UI update

This is an issue that was reported long ago but never seemed to have been fixed.
You can use other functions like; sort by name or the show as list to renew the categories and/or the thumbs after importing or drag/dropping.

[stokerg]

Hi @Peter Werner,

We have had reports of this before but I don't think it's something we've been able to replicate here.  I've tried replicating it here on my office laptop with multiple Assets files, all of different sizes and my Assets panel is refreshed each time.

So I can try with the same files you are using, could you upload the assets you are importing to our Dropbox here and I'll see if I can replicate this with your files  

[Peter Werner]

@stokerg Thank you for looking into this!

As far as I can tell, pretty much any SVG or JPEG from any source I tried triggers this bug, so I don't think this is related to the file being dragged into the panel.

I even created an empty new Designer document, drew a rectangle inside it, saved it to the Desktop, closed the document and dragged the file icon of the .afdesign file from the Desktop into a subcategory in the Assets panel. Results are exactly the same.

Let me know if you would still like me to upload a few random files that are known to have triggered the bug (though, again, I haven't found any that don't).

Alternatively, I could send my assets.propcol file if you think that might be the cause.

By the way, contrary to what @Return stated, toggling "Show as List" will not cause the new asset to appear for me. But using the "Sort by …" commands indeed does.

[walt.farrell]

2 hours ago, Peter Werner said:

and dragged the file icon of the .afdesign file from the Desktop into a subcategory in the Assets panel. Results are exactly the same.

I am surprised that it would allow dragging a .afdesign file into the Assets panel at all.

[Ron P.]

I was surprised too, however it works. Also the Assets Panel refreshes as it should.

[Return]

On 4/17/2024 at 6:05 PM, walt.farrell said:

I am surprised that it would allow dragging a .afdesign file into the Assets panel at all.

only one page documents are allowed as assets and pdf was also possible but seems restricted now.

[bbrother]

@stokerg For me it also doesn't refresh automatically after I drop the file. It is necessary to interact with the panel to force a refresh. I checked using PNGs and SVGs. This happens with every file. So @stokerg it's possible that this is a problem for a larger group of users, but you don't see it in the reports, because perhaps not everyone will report that it also applies to them.

[Peter Werner]

I did some more experimenting. It turns out that renaming the assets.propcol file in C:\Users\[username]\.affinity\Common\2.0\user and having Designer create a blank one from scratch on next launch does not fix the issue. Therefore it's probably safe to assume that it's not assets.propcol getting corrupted either.

It also seems to be irrelevant whether I drag a file from the Desktop or an Explorer window showing an SMB network location.

Next thing I can think of is system language – my system is running Windows 10 Pro 22H2 with non-English locale.