Fresco Platform Update – Version 1.5.8 (7 September 2026)

This release extends the embed whitelist, introduces a lightweight cookie banner, allows Symplectic publications to be added to Tabs, and improves the editing and content management experience.

• Embeddable services
  • The Embed component now supports AirTable, Instagram, Matterport and ThingLink
  • Embedded services are no longer automatically enabled on release. This ensures Cookie statements are accurate and prevents editors from using an unintended service on the site. Site Administrators can choose which approved services are available to editors. More information is provided via this News article
• Greater visibility for site styling group
  • The menu label Site Settings > Site Tier has been updated from Site Tier to Styling Group, and Site Administrators can now view the site’s Styling Group in site settings
• More flexibility for Symplectic publications
  • The Symplectic component can now be added inside Tabs
• Improved cookie consent banner
  • The cookie banner now appears in a lighter, simpler form by default, with clear options to accept all, decline optional cookies or manage cookies. It links out to the expanded cookie control banner. There is no close button to ensure a user makes an active choice to dismiss the banner. It aligns with OxWeb's approach for consistency of experience across Oxford sites
• Editing improvements and content management
  • Documents saved in the Media library can now be excluded from site search indexing using a toggle button when editing a Document in the Media library. Editors can also choose to enable the toggle before an item is moved to Trash
  • Header component Header title field is now limited to 118 characters, helping to keep headers within the intended design constraints. Existing longer titles are not retroactively being changed. The character limit will be enforced if the title is subsequently edited
  • The Save configuration button for Headers and Footers has been moved higher up the page to make it easier to save new site-wide configuration
  • Articles can now reference either an existing Person record in the Author metadata or alternatively a plain-text author name can be entered (up to 229 characters), making it easier to credit authors who do not need a separate Person page
  • The Change Site Owner tab has been restricted to Platform Administrators while items in development affecting this process are completed

• Embed component
  • Shiny, Oxford Maps and TimelineJS embeds now display at the expected size to anonymous users
  • An Embed component can now be selected for editing in Page Preview rather than using the Component Outline view
  • A caption added to an Embed component now displays horizontally
  • Figshare links now use the intended main-content link colour, so their appearance follows the site’s styling options
  • Figshare Web Gallery controls no longer overlap when search and filtering are enabled
• Layout, styling and navigation
  • Standard headers now correctly align a custom site logo when the Header Title field is left blank
  • The Space Between Columns setting on the Styles tab now changes the visible gap between columns per the selected option. This functionality is likely to be simplified in the future
  • When a section is nested within another section, and a secondary colour is applied to the nested section, the background colour doesn't bleed beyond the column it has been placed within
  • Editors working on pages without a header can now see the plus button controls to add another section or layout
  • Top-level menu link descriptions now appear on hover as intended
• Editing, permissions and site management
  • Image attribution field can now be edited for migrated images
  • Site Publishers can no longer edit page templates
  • Custom favicons are preserved after a platform release
  • When editing or adding a URL redirect, 300/304/305 response codes have been removed as options because they were generating an error
  • Media items deleted from Trash no longer appear in site search results
• Listings and filtering
  • Listings now respect sorting by taxonomy when 'Filter by Terms' is applied to a listing
• Cookie controls
  • Cookie control banner no longer unexpectedly reappears after the relevant preferences have already been saved
  • The Accept all cookies and Decline optional cookies buttons are now clearly visible in the cookie banner

• Media files which are replaced by a new uploaded file when a Media item is edited remain visible in Search results
  • Toggle on 'Prevent search indexing' and Save before replacing the file
• Items which had been deleted from Trash prior to this release remain visible in Search results

Post-release update:

• Quick Links are misaligned within the Header on some Fresco sites. The issue appears to be limited to sites using the Default Header, a Custom Logo and an empty Header Title field
  • Edit the Header > Content tab > Add a single space to the empty Header title field

This release also includes routine platform maintenance and security hardening. Technical detail relating to security updates has intentionally been omitted. Internal work in this release also supports feature flags, migration and deployment reliability, automated testing, site administration and future platform development

A hot-fix release was also made on 13 August and 24 August to correct defects arising from release 1.5.7:

• Cookie preferences are now retained while site pages are browsed
• Event handlers carried over from migrated Mosaic WYSIWYG content are now removed during auto-migration so the Text component can subsequently be edited
• If a Mosaic WYSIWYG included an embedded service, the HTML object is now removed from the Text component during auto-migration as intended
• Mosaic WYSIWYG formatting which is unsupported in the Fresco Text component is removed during auto-migration and existing content has been cleaned. More information is provided in HTML support news

This release comprises:

• sprint: W4 - Sprint 8
• backlog items: 128415, 127273, 128408, 127722, 130036, 128664, 127447, 127270, 126515, 85291, 116027, 91944, 117187, 125908, 129768, 130214, 129361, 129292, 127260, 128789, 114986 (1.5.7.2 hot-fix release), 130663, 131332, 131299, 119239, 130907, 131353
• bugs: 129380, 129381, 129293, 129258, 127749, 125733, 130323, 128697, 93204, 128583, 126107, 96377, 126912 (1.5.7.2 hot-fix release), 126808 (1.5.7.2 hot-fix release), 129531, 130985, 130454 (1.5.7.1 hot-fix release), 131428, 125426, 128600, 130982, 131007, 131048, 132015