News Web Part rendering issues

Brass Contributor

Is anyone noticing major rendering issues with the SharePoint Online News web part?

The issues are similar to this post...

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/sharepoint/changes-to-top-story-news-web-part/m-p/2586536

...but the impact is also on other 'Layout' types. It is almost as if Microsoft have broken their CSS or something, as the images used in news item banners are rendering as full size, rather than being cropped and having a gradient applied (to ensure text is readable in the web part).

 

My configuration of the web part is as shown below (or attached), and I can confirm that this issue is happening in multiple tenants, and mulitple site collections. In fact, I can't find any site collection where this issue ISN'T occurring.

 

JoeAyre_0-1627361942708.pngJoeAyre_1-1627361948320.pngJoeAyre_2-1627361953027.png

 

Be very keen to hear of others experiencing this, and would be grateful if others could test this in their own tenants to see how widescale the problem is.

 

Thanks,

Joe

 

22 Replies
Hi!
In my case I have not noted this problem so far, but I will update the thread in case it happens

I should note, that all the tenants I have confirmed the issue is occuring on have their data location set to 'Australia'. @Juan Carlos González Martín - are you able to let me know the data location of the tenant you have tested on?

Hi Joe,
My tenants are in Europe.

@Joe Ayre 

I am experiencing the same as you described and yes I'm also located in Australia. Looks like Microsoft rolled something out and broke the way news displays.

I'm about to have a remote session with Microsoft Support so hopefully this gets escalated and fixed quick! @DJ-11
Thanks for confirming.
I can also replicate the issue. Will keep an eye on this tread for updates.
We are experiencing this, too. Our tenant is in Europe.

@Joe Ayre I have a similar situation since a couple of days: images used to be scaled to fit (above the actual text of the news post), but suddenly they overlap over the text. Have to manually change image format so text is readable. 

This is a major issue for our company: we use news webpart a lot and cannot afford to instruct our users to manually resize images before posting.

Same here (data location European Union). Temp workaround is to switch the layout to for example list, where this is not occurring.

I notice during loading of the page, it seems to initially load well (proper scale to fit), but once completely loaded it enlarges the image.

 

Very much interested in hearing the feedback on your case with MS!

Same also in Swiss, New Web Part -> Layout Hub News Images habe different size...
We are having the same issue here
Keep us posted as I too have the issue and our tenant is set in the US
Meanwhile it has appeared on the Service Health page of the M365 Admin Center under SP273435.
Looks to be resolved now.
Indeed same here
I can confirm that in all of my tenants in Australia this now appears to have been resolved. I spent an hour on a support call with Microsoft who took logs via Fiddler, etc. but have yet to receive an explanation as to what caused the problem. Thanks to all who commnted and helped add eweight to the service request seriousness. I'll report back if I hear any more regarding what caused the issue and what the fix was.
See below for the full response from Microsoft. Sounds like a 'code issue', which they have 'manually' updated. Sounds like a slightly 'hacky' approach, rather than rolling back, but good to see it fixed....for now.

SP273435:
July 28, 2021 1:56 AM
Title: Users are seeing titles rendering on top of images in news web parts on SharePoint Online sites

User Impact: Users were seeing titles rendering on top of images in news web parts on SharePoint Online sites.

Final status: Following our review of ULS logs, we've identified a code issue that was causing users to see titles rendering on top of images in news web parts on SharePoint Online sites. We've manually updated the code, and confirmed with affected users that it has remediated impact.

Scope of impact: This issue may have impact any user viewing images in news web parts on SharePoint Online sites.

Start time: Tuesday, July 27, 2021, 11:42 AM (1:42 AM UTC)

End time: Wednesday, July 28, 2021, 1:32 AM (7/27/2021, 3:32 PM UTC)

Root cause: A code issue was causing users to see titles rendering on top of images in news web parts on SharePoint Online sites.

Next steps:
- We're further reviewing the news web parts code to find ways to prevent this problem from happening again.

This is the final update for the event.
Our SharePoint intranet is now experiencing this issue again. Is no one else?