Confluence 4.1 Release Notes
13 December 2011
With great pleasure, Atlassian presents Confluence 4.1. With numerous improvements for content presentation, it delivers the extraordinary new Autoconvert feature, along with attractive new image effects, find and replace, new icons, improved translation features and global PDF stylesheets.
Highlights of Confluence 4.1:
Thank you for your feedback:
More than 35 requests implemented
Over 185 votes fulfilled
More:
- Read the Upgrade Notes for important information about this release.
- See the full list of issues resolved in this release.
OnDemand Customers
Confluence OnDemand customers will be automatically upgraded to Confluence 4.1 in the next scheduled maintenance window.
Highlights of Confluence 4.1
Autoconvert for Pasted Links
When you paste URLs into Confluence, Autoconvert will now analyze what you are pasting and automatically convert it into something that will display well in Confluence. Examples include YouTube videos, JIRA issue queries and Google Maps; many other content types are supported.
YouTube URLs
Create the widget below with Autoconvert, simply by pasting the YouTube URL onto the page.
Paste this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2XQlQGf0lnk
To get this:
JIRA Issues URLs
Create the JIRA list below with Autoconvert, simply by pasting the JIRA query URL onto the page.
Paste this:
https://jira.atlassian.com/sr/jira.issueviews:searchrequest-xml/temp/SearchRequest.xml?jqlQuery=project...
To get this:
Google Maps URLs
Create the Google Maps Widget below with Autoconvert, simply by pasting the Google Maps URL onto the page.
Paste this:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=san+francisco+golden+gate+bridge...
To get this:
Other supported content types:
- Confluence page, blog, comment, status, user links,
- Shared screenshot links from Skitch,
- Google search results links,
- Confluence shortcut links: when pasting these, just the name of the link content (minus the URL prefix) will be used as the link display name.
Image effects
Enhance the presentation of your images and screenshots with slick new border effects.
Click Effects to apply taped style, instant camera style, drop shadow style, captions and more.
See the documentation for more details.
Quick find and replace
Updating your wiki content is now easier with the new find and replace feature. Using familiar conventions, automatically find and replace specific text strings within your Confluence page or blog. It's also accessible with a keyboard shortcut Ctrl-F (Windows) or Cmd-F (Mac OS).
See the documentation for more details.
Follow Your Network On the Dashboard
See recent updates from just the people you follow in Confluence, with the new network tab on the Confluence dashboard. With this, following a few people in different parts of your company to make a quick filter of the main events happening outside your immediate team.
Space attachments macro
The new Space Attachments macro allows you to show all the attachments in the current space on your page. You can even filter them by file extension. Previously, you've only been able to show the attachments on the current page, using the Attachments macro.
Simply type {space-attachments} into a page to use it.
Global PDF stylesheets
Set your custom PDF stylesheets at the global level, as with custom layouts. When there is no specific individual space stylesheet defined, PDF space exports will fall back to this global stylesheet. This means that users won't have to re-apply the same stylesheet to all their individual spaces. This is an efficient way of achieving one look and feel.
See the documentation for more details.
Use any character in page titles
Confluence now allows "special" characters in your page titles, such as semicolons and exclamation marks. This allows more descriptive page names and generally removes restrictions when creating page titles and naming your content.
New translation feature
For those customers working on creating translations of the Confluence user interface, the 4.1 release has a new feature that will help. After opening the Confluence dashboard, you can simply add this text to the end of your Confluence URL, like so:
?i18ntranslate=onThen press Enter.
This will then cause each element of the user interface to display its special key name while Confluence is still in an interactive mode. This makes it easier to find the essential context for each key, which can then be searched on http://translations.atlassian.com where you can enter an appropriate translation for your custom language pack.
The key names are displayed with a "lightning bolt" graphic between elements of the names. For example, the buttons will show up with elements shown like so:
For the Browse menu, you can find its associated system.space.menu key on http://translations.atlassian.com. When you use this new translation feature, you can see the full context of the user interface elements. By understanding where a feature appears on the interface, for example the Browse menu, you can write a more meaningful translation for your users.
To turn off the translation view, use this:
?i18ntranslate=off
Other improvements
As always, we have made various small improvements to Confluence.
General improvements
- Favorites have been refined
You'll now see a newly named and cleaner Favorites tab in your personal space. Additionally, the list of favorites is now paginated and you can click the stars to remove favorites. - Global plugin & macro timeout setting
There is now a globally configurable timeout setting. This will stop pages going into a permanent loading state. In the past, this could lead to instability issues. - New JSON RPC
Confluence now has a JSON RPC library. This offers a way for Javascript developers to more easily access the Confluence API. For more details, see the documentation.
Editor improvements
- Copy and paste table improvements
You can now copy and paste multiple table rows and entire tables. There are also new keyboard shortcuts. You can now use Alt+Up Arrow or Alt+Down Arrow to add a row above or below the current row. - Copy and paste list improvements
If you copy and paste list items from one list to another, the list content will now be joined together as expected.
New icons
Based on customer feedback, this version of Confluence has a number of redesigned interface and installer icons. These new designs add more of a contemporary look and feel and are aimed at improving icon consistency and ease of use in Confluence.
Installer icons
General Confluence Icon
User Interface icons
Helping you transition to the Confluence 4.x generation
We've created a set of resources to help you manage the transition to Confluence 4.x. The change management resources are listed under the current documentation.
Confluence Quick Reference Guide
Kick-start Confluence adoption with the Origami Necktie – full of tips and tricks to help your users get off the ground running. Get yours now!
Release notices
Upgrading from a previous version of Confluence
We strongly recommend that you back up your Confluence Home directory and your database before upgrading. Follow the normal upgrade instructions to upgrade your test instance to this release.
When upgrading from a previous version of Confluence, if you have customized your cache settings (as documented in Cache Performance Tuning) then you may run into memory problems during the wiki to XHTML migration. We are working to fix this in a later release, but in the meantime you can revert your ehcache.xml to the default version.
Removed functionality
Features removed from Confluence
Personal labels
The ability to create personal labels is being removed in Confluence 4.1. You will still be able to access any personal labels you have created previously by going directly to http://<confluence_url>/users/viewmylabels.action- Mail archiving
This feature is being disabled by default in Confluence 4.1. However, it is still bundled as the Confluence Mail Archiving plugin, and easy to restore. Current users of the feature will not suffer any interruption, as the feature will be automatically kept in an operational state if you are using it. See details. - The SVG graphics library Batik
Any plugins that previously relied on the Batik package being provided by Confluence will now have to bundle their own version of Batik into their plugin. See details.
A big thank you to everyone who helps us ensure that Confluence keeps getting better and better!
The Confluence 4.1 team
Development
Ryan Ackley
Nabeelah Ali
Richard Atkins
Niraj Bhawnani
Joseph Clark
Paul Curren
Lachlan Dally
Chris Darroch
Anna Dominguez
Matthew Erickson
Steven Haffenden
Chris Kiehl
Fabien Kraemer
Daniel Kjellin
Steve Lancashire
David Loeng
Brian Nguyen
Craig Petchell
Agnes Ro
Matt Ryall
Stefan Saasen
Sam Tardif
David Taylor
Ryan Thomas
Wesley Walser
Don Willis
Joe Xie
Architecture
Charles Miller
Build and release engineering
Adrián Deccico
Plugin updates
David Chui
Philip Cher
Kai Fung Chong
Management
Product management
Bill Arconati
John Masson
Product marketing management
Ryan Anderson
Terrence Caldwell
Matthew Hodges
Development manager
Jonathan Gilbert
Cross Team
Design
Henry Tapia
Quality assurance
Joey Corea
Mark Hrynczak
Glenn Martin
Technical writing
Edwin Dawson
Support
Sydney support
Vincent Choy
Partha Kamal
Donna McGahan
Michael Seager
Amsterdam support
Tony Atkins
Sherali Karimov
Dennis Kromhout van der Meer
Brazil support
Rodrigo Adami
Tiago Kolling Comasseto
Guilherme Heck
Alyson Reis
Kuala Lumpur support
Husein Alatas
Janet Albion
Septa Cahyadiputra
Kah Loun Foong
Sim Foo Guan
Heng Hwa Loi
Joachim Ooi
Hanis Suhailah
San Francisco support
Rick Bal
David Chan
Robert Chang
Ty Davis
Marian Finch
Adam Laskowski
Brad Mallow
Wayne Tombo
Timothy Wong
Integration management
Melanie Carasso
Ted Tencza
Integration development
Sam Le Berrigaud
Don Brown
Trevor Campbell
Shihab Hamid
Adrian Hempel
Justin Koke
Peggy Kuo
Mark Lassau
Olli Nevalainen
Tim Pettersen
Felix Schmitz
Piyawoot Songsiritat
Joseph Walton
James Wong