 | Confluence 3.0 fixes some security flaws. Please refer to the security advisory for details of the security vulnerabilities, risk assessment and mitigation strategies. |
1 June 2009
With great pleasure, Atlassian presents Confluence 3.0.
Confluence 3.0 is a major release which presents a number of new features and enhancements. With Confluence 3.0, we introduce the new Macro Browser feature, which provides a simple, point-and-click interface for discovering and inserting any of Confluence's 80+ bundled macros into a page. Macros greatly enhance the functionality of Confluence pages by allowing users to add tools like task lists, RSS feeds and multi-media content. The macro browser makes it easy to select the macro you need and preview its output with your chosen settings before finally adding it to your page. It also makes it easy to edit and modify the parameters of existing macros on a page.
Confluence 3.0 also provides a range of social features that allow you to discover and connect with other users in your Confluence site. User Profiles have been redesigned with a more intuitive layout and provide additional fields for users to share information about themselves like their IM handle or personal website. The new Network feature lets you follow other users inside your Confluence site and view an aggregated stream of all the activity such as page edits, blogs posts and status updates they undertake. The new Hover Profile feature displays a user's summary profile information whenever you hover your mouse pointer over their name anywhere in Confluence. Hover profiles provide easy access to the user's email address and profile details and allow you to add them to your network. Finally, you can let others know what you are working on, share a link or simply broadcast a short message to your team by setting your User Status. Once your current status message has been updated, it will appear in various activity streams, your profile views and your profile sidebar.
The new PDF Export feature addresses one of the most highly voted requests for Confluence. You have full control over your PDF exports using Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) modifications. You also have the ability to customise page and margin sizes, add a title page or table of contents list to your exported document, add customisable headers and footers and easily select a subsection of documentation for export.
The Rich Text Editor now includes a right-click context menu that makes it easier to insert links, images, macros and tables into your Confluence page. It is now also possible to copy/cut and paste rows within tables.
Confluence's performance has been substantially improved in both standalone and clustered installations with dramatic improvements in response times. Furthermore, scalability has been enhanced, with significantly improved CPU utilisation compared to previous Confluence versions.
|
Highlights of this Release:
|
Responding to your Feedback:
|
680+ votes satisfied
- Upgrading Confluence should be fairly straightforward. We strongly recommend that you back up your Confluence Home directory and your database before upgrading.
- Please refer to the Confluence 3.0 Upgrade Notes for further essential information about plugins and other factors affecting your upgrade.
Highlights of Confluence 3.0
|
|
Introducing the Macro Browser |
- Using the macro browser's fast filtering capabilities, you can quickly find any bundled macro, including additional plugin-based macros installed on your Confluence system.
- Select your macro and modify and preview its parameters before adding it to your Confluence page or blog post.
- Take a look at our documentation for more details on the new macro browser feature.
|
|
Enhanced User Profiles |
Confluence's enhanced user profiles area has been augmented to incorporate Confluence 3.0's new community-based features and to improve the overall user experience.
- User profiles now allow users to enter 'structured' information about themselves, which can be used by Confluence's community-based features.
- Each user's profile view shows a list of their own recent activities, such as page or blog post updates, changes to their profile information and status updates (described below).
- A summary of each user's profile information is displayed in a 'profile sidebar' on the right-hand side of pages within their personal space and their blog posts too. The profile sidebar appears on pages based on the default Confluence theme.
- Take a look at our documentation for more details on the enhanced user profiles feature.
The new user profile view
The new profile sidebar which appears on your blog posts or pages within your personal space
|
|
Introducing Your Network |
The new network feature helps you keep track of what other users are doing throughout your Confluence site, by allowing you to 'follow' their recent activities.
- The activities tracked by the network feature include:
- Additions or edits to pages or blog posts, including comments of users you are following.
- Updates to statuses or profile details of users you are following.
- From the network view, you can set up an RSS feed which provides notifications on the activities of users you are following.
- Take a look at our documentation for more details on the network feature.
|
|
New User Status |
User status allows you to broadcast a short message of up to 140 characters rapidly for others to see.
- Your messages could include anything from what you are currently working on to a message or a hyperlink you want to share immediately with other users.
- Other users can see your status messages on various activity streams throughout Confluence and on your profile views and personal space pages.
- Take a look at our documentation for more details on the new user status feature and your status updates page.
|
|
New Hover Profile Feature |
Hover profile is a convenient tool that provides quick access to key information about other Confluence users, their user profile features and their network functions. Whenever you hover your mouse pointer over a Confluence user's name, key details about them appears in a popup balloon, such as their name, profile picture, email address and their current status.
- From a user's hover profile popup balloon, you can access the following functions:
- Follow the user to track their recent activities via your network (or stop following them).
- Directly send the user an email message via your email client.
- You can also access the following features of their user profile via their hover profile popup:
- The user's personal space.
- The user's profile, network or status updates views.
- Take a look at our documentation for more details on the new user hover profile feature.
|
|
Customisable Enhanced PDF Exports |
- Key enhancements to PDF export customisations include the ability to:
- Customise page and margin sizes.
- Add a table of contents or add headers and footers with customisable content.
- Add a title page to your document.
- Select a subsection of a space (for example, a chapter or section) to export more easily.
- PDF exports are now up to four times faster on large spaces.
- This feature addresses some of the most highly voted Confluence issues. Important bugs in the old PDF export feature have been fixed in this new version, including:
- Fixed width columns — Table columns were consistently presented with fixed widths using the old PDF export function. However, the new PDF export function presents table columns with variable widths, as they appear on screen.
- Ability to handle landscape page exports.
- Take a look at our documentation for more details on the enhanced PDF export and PDF stylesheet features.
The old PDF export function only generated fixed-width table columns
The new PDF export feature now generates variable-width table columns
Easily add a title page when you export a space as a PDF
A table of contents is generated in the PDF by default when you export a space
It's easy to add custom headers and footers
|
|
Improved Rich Text Editor |
The rich text editor contains several interface enhancements and bug fixes that improve its overall user experience.
- The rich text editor includes a right-click context menu, making it easier to insert links, images, macros and tables into your Confluence page or blog post.
- It is now possible to cut/copy and paste rows.
- Take a look at our documentation for more details on the rich text editor overview to see more information about its enhancements and redesigned interface.
Right-click context menu
|
|
Performance Improvements |
A number of performance improvements have been implemented.
- Confluence is now able to use more available resources under high load conditions.
- For Confluence Standalone installations, actions are up to 2 times faster.
- For Confluence Clustered installations:
- Viewing pages is up to 2.5 times faster under medium, high and peak load.
- Other actions are up to 5 times faster under medium load and 10 times faster under high and peak load.
- For more information, please refer to the Confluence 3.0 performance improvements documentation.
Confluence Standalone installations - Medium Load
|
|
Engine Room and Developer Community |
- Confluence 3.0 now implements the Atlassian Plugin Framework 2.2 and the new Shared Access Layer (SAL).
- For more information, please refer to the Plugin Framework Documentation.
|
|
Administration Improvements |
Confluence contains a number of improvements to its administrative features, many of which are easily accessible from the Administration Console.
- Security improvements:
- A new form token authentication mechanism provides Confluence with the means to validate the origin and intent of requested actions, thus adding an additional level of security against phenomena such as cross-site request forgery. This feature also provides a mechanism for Confluence plugin developers to protect their plugins. For more information, please refer to the form token handling documentation.
- Anti-XSS mode is now enabled by default and the remaining encoding bugs have been fixed.
- You can now generate a thread dump from the Administration Console. See our documentation on generating a thread dump.
- It is now possible to adjust the size of Confluence's internal caches, allowing administrators to fine tune Confluence's cache handling and performance at runtime without the need to restart Confluence. For more information on using this this feature, refer to our page on cache statistics.
- The Office connector contains additional configuration options and provides simplified handling of the {viewfile} macro for the new Macro Browser.
|
|
More than 240 Fixes and Improvements |
Page comparisons have been improved such that deletions or additions of single words (and short phrases) within a single line are highlighted red or green, respectively. Furthermore, large sections of unchanged text are compacted to reduce page length, but their content and context can easily be revealed at a click.
- Page comparisons now appear in email notifications, whenever a user edits a page or blog post.
- As well as the enhanced PDF export feature, you can now choose a subsection of a space (such as a document chapter) more easily, to export to XML or HTML.
- Using the new network, profile and user status list macros, you can incorporate components of Confluence 3.0's new community-based features directly into your page or blog post.
- Atlassian now provides support for recently added features to the widget macro, which include Widgetbox, Yahoo Video, Dailymotion, Wufoo HTML Form Builder, DabbleDB, Google Calendar and BackType micro-blogging.
- The Activity Macros now incorporate improved handling of the 'author' parameter.
- Take a look at the complete list of issues resolved in Confluence 3.0.
Page comparisons in email notifications
Known Issues in this Release
We have an enthusiastic and dedicated group of testers and customers who jump in there, try out the new Confluence release, and report any problems so that we can fix them quickly.
We would like to highlight a known issue affecting the rich text editor, in which text cannot be added to the end of line that already ends with a link. Refer to CONF-15053 for more information about this issue. For more information on other known issues associated with the release of Confluence 3.0, please refer to Confluence 3.0 Known Issues.
A big thank you to everyone who helps us ensure that Confluence keeps getting better and better.
Comments (21)
Jun 03, 2009
Anonymous says:
Curious - isn't there some sort of synchronous chat feature that allows people v...Curious - isn't there some sort of synchronous chat feature that allows people viewing at the same time to see each other and chat - like Google Docs spreadsheets? Or easily see who is online in a space or on a page to strike up a conversation? The Twitter-like thing is cool, but a capability to have one-to-one or group chat embedded would be excellent, too.
Jun 12, 2009
Anonymous says:
Hi I completely agree, a simultaneous chat function would be brilliant. There i...Hi
I completely agree, a simultaneous chat function would be brilliant. There is already a macro for a "users online" list which can be added to any space, I use it for tracking who is online at any given time within my office.
Jun 14, 2009
Zed Yap [Atlassian] says:
Hi, Curious - isn't there some sort of synchronous chat feature that allows peo...Hi,
As far as I know, the feature requested is not available yet. However, you might want to raise a feature request in JIRA:
Please add your comments to the discussion, vote on it and add yourself as a watcher for future updates. Also, please bear in mind the following document on how we schedule features for inclusion in our products: Implementation of New Features and Improvements.
Hope that helps.
Best rgds,
Zed
Jul 06, 2009
Bob Kerns says:
You might want to look at Google Wave as a possible platform for synchronous cha...You might want to look at Google Wave as a possible platform for synchronous chat and simultaneous shared editing.
I'm not sure exactly how you'd go about integrating -- Wave appears to be based on a "shared XML model", rather than a database, so some sort of mapping would need to be done. But it's to be open-source, and provides a rich set of shared editing scenarios that cover quite a range, from wikis to email to chat to shared document creation.
Oct 30
Anonymous says:
This issue is implemented by our plugin. You can download it here Usage: Unkn...This issue is implemented by our plugin.
You can download it here
Usage:
or:
where <wave_url> is the url that you have in your address bar when you are in google wave, for example:
https://wave.google.com/wave/?pli=1#minimized:nav,minimized:contact,restored:wave:googlewave.com!w%252Bg0FiXwsAF
There are also optional parameters width and height:
We have huge plans to enhance this plugin to support embedding Wave in Jira and also to add more features for integrating all Atlassian tools with Google Wave.
If you have any problems or suggestions, please comment here. For now, because we should be getting our own plugin page from Atlassian soon.
Oct 30
Dominik Kapusta says:
(sorry for my previous post - here's a corrected version) This issue is implem...(sorry for my previous post - here's a corrected version)
This issue is implemented by our plugin.
You can download it here
Usage:
{wave:id=<wave_id>}
or:
{wave:url=<wave_url>}
where <wave_url> is the url that you have in your address bar when you are in google wave, for example:
https://wave.google.com/wave/?pli=1#minimized:nav,minimized:contact,restored:wave:googlewave.com!w%252Bg0FiXwsAF
There are also optional parameters width and height:
{wave:id=<wave_id>|height=1000px|width=100%}
We have huge plans to enhance this plugin to support embedding Wave in Jira and also to add more features for integrating all Atlassian tools with Google Wave.
If you have any problems or suggestions, please comment here. For now, because we should be getting our own plugin page from Atlassian soon.
Jun 17, 2009
Terry Wang says:
Confluence 3.0 offers great improvements and new SNS features. Cool stuff. Howe...Confluence 3.0 offers great improvements and new SNS features. Cool stuff.
However, something weird I found about Atlassian website is that you guys don't offer SHA-1 or MD5 digest for the any of the downloads...
It should be something easy for Linux or Mac OS X users within the company, why not be more professional? ;-)
Jun 18, 2009
Anonymous says:
Confluence 3.0 offers great features ,too good. But is there a way to view the ...Confluence 3.0 offers great features ,too good.
But is there a way to view the page version comparisons in rich text also and not only in wiki markup?
Jun 19, 2009
Anonymous says:
greeeeeat feature! would love to see it! why don't you request it in jira? i'll...greeeeeat feature! would love to see it! why don't you request it in jira?
º
i'll do it otherwise
Jun 22, 2009
Anonymous says:
I have already created a ticket. Please vote for it http://jira.atlassian.com/...I have already created a ticket. Please vote for it
http://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CPB-11
Jun 23, 2009
Anonymous says:
I have to agree that this is all fantastic. It is then a shame to spoil it by no...I have to agree that this is all fantastic. It is then a shame to spoil it by not having your plugins up to speed with the new release. I refer specifically to the Applinks plugin which is a show-stopper for me.
Aug 11
Azwandi Mohd Aris [Atlassian] says:
Hi, there. Apologies if this has been an inconvenience for you. The fix has been...Hi, there. Apologies if this has been an inconvenience for you. The fix has been scheduled for Confluence 3.0.1 - you may refer to this page for more information.
Jun 30, 2009
Richmond-rae Dalisay says:
Salutations, I've tried using ver 3.0 and enjoying. Alhtough just some questio...Salutations,
I've tried using ver 3.0 and enjoying.
Alhtough just some questions:
One of the features of 3.0 is that it has a User Profile Side Bar that appears in pages within your Personal Space.
When I tried creating my Personal Space and then created a page. When I went to the page, the User Profile Sidebar doesn't appear.
Thanks in advance.
Sep 08
Sean Winter says:
i would love to know if there is a way for the owner of a personal space to set ...i would love to know if there is a way for the owner of a personal space to set the sidebar to always be minimized.
Oct 21
Mark Hrynczak [Atlassian] says:
Hi Sean, Try adding this to the stylesheet for your personal space: window....Hi Sean,
Try adding this to the stylesheet for your personal space:
div.sidebar-content { display:none; } .has-personal-sidebar #content { margin-right: 10px; }Nov 16
Anonymous says:
Ah-ha! Finally, info on how to turn this off. We've just upgraded to confluence...Ah-ha! Finally, info on how to turn this off.
We've just upgraded to confluence 3.0. The user profile sidebar is awful - provides no useful information and takes up an enormous amount of space on the right hand side, creating a gutter all the way down the page that breaks a number of macros like jira issues. The collapse thing is fiddly to use since the clickable area is too small to acquire easily. In future releases, it would be good to have an option to turn this off completely (and globally), rather than having to prat about with stylesheets etc.
More generally, it's very annoying that every time we upgrade it's necessary to spend ages fixing all our confluence pages so they work the same. For example: the jiraissues macro changed its default behaviour and started rendering in "dynamic" mode instead of static. So I had to go through and add a parameter everywhere we use it to stop that. (Don't want it since it renders in an iFrame, and they're awful for usability.)
Cheers,
Andy
(I have an account on Atlassian jira, but that account doesn't work here. Can't be bothered to deal with another set of credentials, so this is going to show up as anonymous.)
Nov 23
Azwandi Mohd Aris [Atlassian] says:
Hi, Thanks for the feedback. You might want to add some comments in this impro...Hi,
Thanks for the feedback. You might want to add some comments in this improvement request in regards to the user profile sidebar. If that does not cater for your requirements, feel free to raise a request in our issue tracker.
Cheers,
Azwandi
Oct 21
Tricia Ball says:
Agreed. I am also not seeing how to activate this feature. Is there ...Agreed. I am also not seeing how to activate this feature. Is there a setting I am missing?
Oct 21
Mark Hrynczak [Atlassian] says:
The Sidebar is only shown if the Default Theme is being used. If you have a diff...The Sidebar is only shown if the Default Theme is being used. If you have a different theme for your Personal Space, then you will not see the Sidebar.
If you are using the Default Theme and are still not seeing it, then please raise a support request to investigate the issue.
Cheers,
Mark
Dec 06
Jan Dockx says:
Does the current version of Confluence support a way to show the new JIRA O...Does the current version of Confluence support a way to show the new JIRA OpenSocial gadgets?
Dec 06
Sarah Maddox [Atlassian Technical Writer] says:
Hallo Jan Confluence 3.0 does not support OpenSocial gadgets, but release 3.1 wi...Hallo Jan
Confluence 3.1 is due very shortly. Watch this space!
Confluence 3.0 does not support OpenSocial gadgets, but release 3.1 will.
Cheers, Sarah
Add Comment