Confluence 3.5-beta2 ("Beta 2") Release Notes
Confluence versions marked "Milestone", "Beta" or "Release Candidate" (RC) are development releases, which are preliminary releases leading up to the official release of a major Confluence version. They are a snapshot of our work in progress and provide an advance preview of new features to our customers and the general public. Confluence plugin developers can also use development releases to test and fix their plugins in advance of an official release.
The main distinction between a beta and a milestone release is that milestone releases typically acquire new features with each subsequent milestone version, whereas beta releases are predominantly feature-complete. Beta releases still undergo bug fixing and occasionally, existing features may be enhanced or added in subsequent beta versions. Release candidates are close to being ready for final release, but may still undergo changes before the final release.
Do not use in production
Development releases should not be used in production environments as they are not officially supported.
For all production use and testing of Confluence, please use the latest official release.
Who should try this out?
With development releases, the Confluence development team aims to provide plugin developers with an opportunity to see the latest changes in the code.
Furthermore, if you are a Confluence customer who is eager to see the new features and provide us with feedback on our upcoming major release, we encourage you to try out our development releases.
Development releases are not production ready. Development releases are snapshots of the ongoing Confluence development process. While we try to keep these releases stable, they have not undergone the same degree of testing as a full release, and could contain features that are incomplete or may change or be removed before the next full release.
No upgrade path. Because development releases represent work in progress, we cannot provide a supported upgrade path between development releases, or from any development release to a final release. You may not be able to migrate any data you store in a Confluence development release to a future Confluence release.
Atlassian does not provide support for development releases.
Each development release has passed all our automated tests, has undergone some performance testing and has been used for one week on our official internal Confluence server. Furthermore, most of the solved issues have been reviewed.
Be aware that our development releases are still undergoing final performance and compatibility testing for databases and application servers. Hence, we recommend that you use development releases on installations with small (as opposed to full production-level) user bases.
Upgrade Procedure
If you wish to upgrade your existing Confluence installation with this version, ensure you have created a separate copy of your current Confluence production installation first and using that copy, follow the normal upgrade instructions to upgrade it to this development release. If you have also implemented customized site- or space-specific layouts, you will need to re-implement them after the upgrade. Otherwise, some of the new features in Confluence (or possibly existing features) may not function correctly.
Downloads
All development releases are available from Development Releases on the Atlassian website.
Previous Betas and Milestones
- Confluence 3.5-beta1 ("Beta 1") Release Notes – 10 February 2011
- Confluence 3.5-m4 ("Milestone 4") Release Notes – 22 December 2010
- Confluence 3.5-m3 ("Milestone 3") Release Notes – 17 December 2010
- Confluence 3.5-m2 ("Milestone 2") Release Notes – 7 December 2010
- Confluence 3.5-m1 ("Milestone 1") Release Notes – 22 November 2010
New Features and Improvements
Highlights of this release:
Support Tools Plugin
Support's Support Tools Plugin is now bundled into Confluence. It provides a log analyzer to help sysadmins identify known issues with their instance, and a new improved support request feature.
Improved Share Button
We've improved the new "Share" button introduced in Confluence 3.5. Notable changes:
- Share with email
You can now easily share a page with someone by entering just their email address.
- Share for blog posts
The Share button now works for blog posts as well as pages. - New email style and short link in email
We've been using the Share button as an opportunity to explore some new email notification designs.
We hope to follow this format for all the other email notifications in the near future. Additionally, to make sure your link doesn't break we now email users the "short link" for a Confluence page instead of the full page URL.
Improved Delegated LDAP User Directory Configuration
We have added an option to copy users automatically from the LDAP server to Confluence when they authenticate for the first time. Copied users can also be assigned automatically to default groups.
Users in directories marked as "Read Only, with Local Groups" can also automatically be added to default groups. 
Bugs fixed
Space Directory bug fixes
- Search filters now fire more reliably, and results are now sorted by the DB, reducing result rendering time
- Only team categories are shown for each space, rather than personal labels or favorites.
- We now show personal space icons rather than the generic space icon.
- Pagination fixes
Other bug fixes
- Performance results are much improved across the board.
- Probably the last ever WYSIWYG round-trip bug fix: the HTML macro now safely round-trips its content (CONF-8441).
- The demonstration space (example site) has been updated with content for Confluence 3.5
- Reshuffled administration console entries, so that security is no longer the top of the list.
- Fixed a bug with watch all blog posts for space receiving notifications for any change, not just blog posts. Also fixed who is listed as watching the space, rather than watching just the blog posts on that space.
- Fixed notification emails showing the wrong unsubscribe links for space blog watches.
- The username for anonymous users can now be translated for email notifications.
- Notifications are now sent using the right locale.
- Global logo descriptions will now be autogenerated, if none was found.
- Errors from the old lucene index format should now be much less verbose or worrying.
- Child page lists are now loaded via AJAX, rather than on initial page render. Users no longer have to wait for a page refresh to expand this list.
- Fixed a bug where malformed label names were always reported as being too long.
- Upgraded to Tomcat 6.0.32 in the Confluence distribution.
- Upgraded to Social Bookmarks Plugin 1.3.7.
- Upgraded to Drag and Drop Plugin 1.0.15.
- Upgraded to Plugin Framework 2.7.1, to reduce the amount of logging for some minor issues.
Improvements for developers
- Added support for EventPublisher @EventListener style listeners to the listener plugin module descriptor. Developers can now configure their listeners in their atlassian-plugin.xml using the standard:
<listener name"Something Happened Listener" key="SomethingHappenedListener" class="com.example.SomethingHappenedListener">
<description>Listener for something happened events</description>
</listener>Known issues
Local users cannot log in when using Crowd or Delegated LDAP
Whatever directories appear after a Crowd or Delegated LDAP directory in the User Directories admin UI will not be consulted, as these two directories currently throw an authentication-failed error, rather than a user-not-found error for users they do not contain. This is being fixed in Crowd now, and will be included in the next build.
Migration error when importing from backup (CONFDEV-3172)
The performance fix for caching crowd Application objects introduced this issue. It's fixed in Crowd now, and will be included in the next build.
What's New showing for beta software
The What's New dialog should not be enabled on a beta install of Confluence, but it is. We're investigating why, and will have a fix before we build another beta/milestone.
Local groups are not imported when doing in place upgrades or restoring from backup
Users currently have to be manually reassociated with their old groups. We're working on fixing it!
Note about CONFDEV issues
The Confluence team is using an internal JIRA project for tracking development with GreenHopper. The CONFDEV issues refer to our internal tracking numbers for user stories or bugs discovered and fixed within the scope of a release.