Confluence 4.0 has reached end of life
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We're collating feedback on the new editor introduced in Confluence 4.0 here. If you have feedback on a bug, a task you now find harder or are unable to do in the new editor then please leave a comment below and we'll incorporate it into this page (and remove the comment afterwards).
For the background on why Wiki markup was removed in Confluence 4.0, please read our blog post, Why We Removed the Wiki Markup Editor in 4.0.
Feedback
| Customer Feedback | Atlassian | |||
| From | Comment | Notes | Related Tickets | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jean-Yves Avenard, Nils Andresen, Brad Newman, Peter Burkholder, Ole Kværnø, Diego Ballve | No more editing with an external text editor where you can run quick find/replace, quickly. | Having Find/Replace built into the editor is on the short term roadmap. | CONF-4402 | |
| MattS | how do I change 100 URLs on a page that have a typo in their domain name? | Matt, if these are appearing as actual links (as I assume) then you'll need to edit and change the URL for each one. If they're just text (not linked) you'll be able to use the Find/Replace functionality of CONF-4402 once it's released. | ||
| Andreas Pfotenhauer | ...imported from a trac wiki, and the importer had left some strange inline css in place, setting some padding and margins, and i was not able to remove it using the new wonderful editor, so finally i edited the page directly in the database... | |||
| Matthias Basler | Finding bugs in the source code is difficult or impossible since one cannot see them in the WYSIWYG editor. (This includes invisible tags that should not be there, f.e. after copying content from a word document into the page) | |||
| Ilya Kaplun | when i paste formatted code into the block, all the leading spaces are removed, and so i have to retab everything | Fix released in v4.0.5 | CONF-23564 | RESOLVED |
| Anonymous | I want "insert jira issue" to be included in the autocomplete when I start with {jira, which now only shows the 'JIRA Issues' and 'JIRA Portlet' macros | JIRA ticket raised for this one. | CONF-23858 | |
| Anonymous | I want to be able to insert or edit a macro and it's paramaters without having to touch the mouse | |||
| Nils Andresen | If I have a table (or a note/warning) directly followed by a heading
| Nils, for a quick workaround of sorts, you can use the Keyboard Shortcuts to remove (and apply) the heading so you don't need to use the mouse when using your second approach. | ||
| Nils Andresen | When inserting a macro with properties (like note:heading=...) I am currently unable to do this
| Nils, is it having to use the mouse to edit that's the main problem here? (Similar to the Anonymous comment above). | ||
| Jean-Yves Avenard | As the wiki being edited is about a mathematical tool, there's lots of use of upper/lower script and font of different size. As the feature to change the font size isn't available with confluence, we created a macro small/big like so: {small:80}text{small}. The wysiwyg is completely broken for those, the smaller sized text appears on a different line so you have to keep switching between wysiwyg mode and preview. | Jean-Yves can you provide an example of what you're trying to do and how it worked before? Is this not something that the subscript & superscript formats can do for you? The Confluence macros that were used to markup text (like {color}) have been replaced with plain HTML. You can create a migration for you macro that will convert those macros to say "<subscript>text</subscript>". See Upgrading and Migrating an Existing Confluence Macro to 4.0. | ||
| Justin Spies | In the past I viewed the Wiki text version, copied that text and then pasted it into a new template. How do I do so now without having to create the document twice since the template editor is not rich text, but rather is straight Wiki text? | This will be addressed in the future | CONF-11744 | |
| sanjay srikonda | Linking within the same page is a nightmare in 4.0. I have to press CTL+K to bring up the link window, yet, NOTHING in that window seems to work for linking within the same page. I have to create the same link 3-4 times before it "sticks" in my page. | Sanjay, I'll try and recreate this and raise a bug in JIRA for you. | ||
| sanjay srikonda | Inserting graphics through the UI is buggy because sometimes it will insert a graphic just fine and the next graphic it will NOT show up or even show in my attached dialog. And, sometimes, thumbnails are not showing up for some inexplicable reason. | sanjay as mentioned previously definitely sounds like a bug, did you raise a support ticket? | ||
| Anonymous | I often capture technical documentation in another editor before posting it to the wiki – this is in lieu of not documenting at all. What is broken is the ability to take these documents in wiki markup and work with it offline before reposting. | Is the problem here then that you need to be able to work offline? | ||
| Diego Ballve | sometimes I used to copy a page away, do replacements on it using wiki syntax on text editor (say most of the page was good some paths and variables in the content had to be changed to reflect a different environment), then insert it back as new page. No can do now. | use case is doing find/replace on links and variables? | ||
| Anonymous | user macros are crippled | Any more detail on this? | ||
| Anonymous | code macro does not work | Any more detail on this? | ||
| Anonymous | copy&paste of content to and from tables is a mess | Let me know if there are still specific problems you're having but the changes to tables in 4.0.5 that are detailed in CONF-23408 will fix a lot of them I suspect. I'll note as resolved but if anyone still has problems with this in 4.0.5 please let me know, | CONF-23408 | RESOLVED |
| Anonymous | send a page by email in wiki-markup to a customer and they could update the documentation | Are you able to provide any additional details of the use case behind this? | ||
| Anonymous | copy/paste of complex layout, even on a mobile device | What's the use case behind this? Not something copy page can do? | ||
| Jean-Yves Avenard | it has broken all my macros | Jean-Yves do you have any specifics to provide on this? | ||
| Nils Andresen | Moving things around in lists (like this one..) by using copy & paste is horrible | Nils would this begin to address those issues? What are the other specifics? | CONF-23899 | |
| sanjay srikonda | how do I make a bulleted/numbered list with either/or in between and then continue the numbering. | Sanjay, I think CONF-23899 will be the beginning of the solution to this also. The next step will be allowing bullets to be included after the delete is done. Do you think that interaction makes sense? | ||
| Nils Andresen | the "enter insert new paragraph"-feature makes me cranky | Nils is this in lists (like above) or other situations also? | ||
| eddie connatser | I created my own Editable Table macro - which relies on saving its content by doing a form post with it's content as wiki-markup and html. The fact that wiki markup isn't processed in the new wiki editor breaks this macro | |||
| Anonymous | I loved being able to focus entirely on the content and not to worry about the formatting | Does Wiki Markup Styler help with this? What is it that inhibits you from writing out your document then coming back through and formatting it afterwards? | ||
| Brad Newman | it takes several button clicks and creation of whitespace to try and paste text in cleanly or fix errors in formatting (e.g. copy plain text, paste it and have it show up as bold, press return to separate out some whitespace, paste again, etc.) | Brad, I'll take a minute later to see if I can recreate this. Do you have any other specific examples of whitespace problems? | ||
Alex (posted Anonymously) | Alex we do sometimes copy over parts of the text from JIRA to Confluence and back, and earlier the wiki markup mode allowed to keep text formatting fully same across both systems without any additional effort.Right now you can copy formatted text from JIRA to Confluence, if you highlight and copy it from the issue details page, not issue edit. However, this is not that handy, because you can't use Ctrl+A to actually highlight all the description text instantly. And obviously - there is no way now to copy formatted text parts from Confluence to JIRA. Matthias One point that became important for us just now is that up to now the wiki markup allowed to easily exchange content between wikis. Since confluence 4 there's no easy way any more to just copy the content or parts of a page to a text editor, send to someone else and have it inserted into another confluence wiki. | |||
| Anonymous | We keep the sources (textile markup files) of this documentation in a VCS. If we can't export the markup, how do you suggest that we edit something, put it in Confluence and push it to the VCS? | Previous comment: Sounds very specific to your use case, but we have a remote API which allows you to convert your wiki markup to storage format. If you wanted you could write a script to simply keep updating the pages that you have from the wiki markup pages you already have in your VCS. Does this solution help? | ||
| Anonymous | [previously] different people could be working on separate pieces of a single page (article) using their own favorite editor (TextMate, e, etc.) and merging the pieces is (was) a no brainer. | Interested in more detail around why this isn't the case now? For new content you could still write it in Wiki Markup even if you wanted to then use the Insert > Wiki Markup dialog, otherwise just format it after combining. Is there more to your use case that means that won't work? | ||
| Peter Burkholder | Search and Replace Formatting: Under markup, I could export a page to a real editor, and change all the .h1 to .h2, or the \{code\} to \{blockquote\} That's a trivial example, but often had real-use cases when, say, my boss has pasted in an email, verbatim, and I needed to change all the forward indents so it's useful going forward, or when importing a page from some off-the-radar wiki out there | |||
| Peter Burkholder | Mouseless editing: As a sufferer of RMI, I keep my injury in check by using a keyboard instead of a mouse as much as possible. I don't see how to do that anymore, for example, something as simple as starting a \{code\} block and then exiting it. ESC doesn't work, nor TAB. | Peter Burkholder, you should be able to escape the code block with the "up"/"down" arrow keys once you have reached the beginning/end of the code block | ||
| Peter Burkholder | Today I had to work on several significant planning pages while on a trip with no network access. With mark up this can still be done, but in 4.x that is gone | |||
| Anonymous | how do I get lines to be single spaced? | shift + enter | ||
| Anonymous | I wanted to edit the urls/text of links. in the wiki format i could just take [a|http://b] and modify the content of the link or the title. now i have to get a GUI popup, click link, edit the link url in the popup, and then edit the link text separately. much much worse user experience for a power user. | |||
| Ilya Kaplun | i used to be able to say {code:sql} and paste formatted code into the editor, and get a nice, syntax highlighted code block. now the only way to specify the language as SQL is to double click, open the gui editor, select from dropdown. | |||
| Greg Whitfield | Can you do a comprehensive "New Editor for Hardcore Wiki Markup Users" tutorial/whitepaper/video, that explains how they would work around the limitations imposed by the removal of the wiki editor | Greg, can you let me know what limitations people are reporting? | ||
| Fast | cursor navigation doesn't behave as expected | Eddie, can you give me some specifics on this one? | ||
| Fast | copy/paste doesn't work as expected | And this one  | ||
| Fast | pasting into a bulleted list causes the entire document to go bold | Do you have the steps to reproduce this? Was it copying text that was bold? I'd like to try and reproduce and raise a JIRA ticket for this bug. On your broader question about reporting bugs (like this one), JING is quite good to do a screencast of exactly what you did and the end result. | ||
Shortcuts? I'm sure they are there.. but what about some simple list as the wiki markup list? And please don't tell me to click this icon or that icon, that is not what I'm after. Consider a help bar in the right side of the editor, for instance. I can't remember all the keyboard shortcuts as there are so many of them | Diego, Jean-Yves have you seen the ? icon at the top right of the editor bar? Click this gives you all of the shortcuts. Does this help, or do you mean that there should be a permanently displayed list of these while editing at all times? | |||
| Jean-Yves Avenard | You start entering a macro, and your workflow is interrupted by distracting UI asking you to enter the arguments.... | |||
| Jean-Yves Avenard | It's just not possible to concentrate on the content and focus on the aspect later | Jean-Yves interested on more detail on this. Since you could just create text and format it later, I assume there is more to it than that? | ||
| Diego Ballve | Navigation is gone from the side when editor is on.. why? | Diego, can you let me know what you mean by this one? | ||
| Anonymous | The new editor is nice, but is a pain. A lot of functionality is lost. A lot of productivity is lost. | Love to get the details of the functionality and productivity | ||
| nicolas frank | still som bugs to fix, but I am sure it will progress through the next versions | Nicolas, if you have any specific bugs you'd like listed please let me know | ||
| Anonymous |
| CONF-23842 shipped in 4.0.5 | CONF-23842 | RESOLVED |
| Alexander Bezruk | Ability to nest expand macros | In 3.5 you could create additional expand user macros with different names (expand2, expand3 etc, technique described here) and they would work while nested. Using this technique, with that old user macro code doesn't work. | ||
| Anonymous | Create a link on one line, looks fine in editor but preview has the link extending to the rest of the text on the page | |||
| Anonymous | Monospace text not ending where it should, I then have to mount my mouse and navigate through some little buttons to remove the formatting | CONF-23984 | ||
| Don Gamble | Changing a macro from one type to another is now more complicated and no longer obvious. Yes you can select the macro, open the macro dialog, hit back, and then change the macro - but this is neither quick or obvious. | Don has raised CONF-24026 also | ||
| Don Gamble | With the new editor there appears to be no way to delete a macro and leave the body. This is a real issue when you are editing with sections and columns and you are making major format and organizational changes. Cutting and pasting the body is a slow and clumsy solution. | Don has raised CONF-24026 also | ||
| Don Gamble | Create separation between Macro containers and their contents and other similar relationships, eg: Links as containers for images | See 'recommendation' section below in comment | ||
| Don Gamble | Experiencing issues with cursor placement / cursor not being present on the screen and also selection highlighting problems | Don to advise his OS and Browser so we can do more testing using his examples below in his comment | ||
| Matthias Basler | Working with lots of sections/columns (f.e. we use them to position images and their captions) causes very clumsy nested macro blocks having lot of white space. This reduces the amount of visible content in the editor and makes the page appear very large (in the editor), which makes it hard to find the pieces to edit. Having a more compact appearance (similar to the tables!) would be preferable. Having a more compact appearance (similar to the tables!) would be preferable. | |||
Additional Ideas
While we want the focus of this page to remain specific and detailed feedback on the new editing experience that we can address, a number of people have put considerable effort into outlining their ideas for alternate editing strategies and we also wanted to capture these below:
| From | Idea |
|---|---|
| Alexy Kotenko | Okay, as the WYSIWYG abilities are wider than wiki markup allows - let it be. But you can still provide a solution similar to one implemented in JIRA search. In there you have a search form for rather simple requests, and direct SQL edit for complicated requests. And if directly edited SQL is too complicated to show it as a form - it just tells you "search query is too complicated" and doesn't allow to switch back to form. As earlier you have claimed that implementing XML-to-wiki transformation is easy - I see no problem to still allow wiki edit, but with XML format on backend and disallow wiki if something too complicated was created through WYSIWYG. This can easily be added as a plugin, to solve your problem with complains on the core software. |
Anonymous (In reponse to Alexy) | This sounds like a very good idea, and I hope Atlassian will take the time to investigate it. By definition, people who still want to use wiki markup will not be using the most complex WYSIWYG-only formatting, so it should be possible to convert almost everything such users write back to markup. Another suggestion would be to extend the Wiki Markup Styler plugin to do the same thing. Ideally, any content that can be converted back to markup, would be. And any complex elements that cannot be converted would just appear as they do in the normal WYSIWYG view. This would avoid the possibility of one complex piece of content causing a whole page to be marked as "too complicated to edit through wiki markup". If Atlassian choose to do this, the other vital requirement (for me) is that we can copy the wiki markup from the editor. At the moment, the plugin displays markup elements on-screen, but if I try to copy them it just gives me the underlying text. In common with other commenters, sometimes I prefer to copy markup from a Confluence page into a text editor and edit it there, before pasting it back (either into a different page, or into another part of the same page). |
| Todd Day | Ability to wrap entire pages in the Wiki Markup macro and not have them auto-convert to storage format. Additionally:
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