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
Resolved
JIRA Issues Raised
Please note that while JIRA issues have been raised for all these comments, I don't want to set unreasonable expectations so just be aware that being in this list is not a guarantee of something being implemented. As always our Implementation of New Features Policy and Bug Fixing Policy apply.
Require More Discussion
Customer Feedback | Atlassian | |||
Theme | From | Comment | Notes | Related Tickets |
---|---|---|---|---|
Link Editing | 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. | Anonymous, there was a bug that prevented you entering the link text in the link dialog which is now fixed as of 4.1 which helps. Does it go far enough to address your concerns? | - CONF-24017Getting issue details... STATUS |
Removing HTML/CSS after Import/Paste | 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... | Andreas, Matthias, I wondered whether you tried to select all content and use the 'Clear Formatting' option and how well that worked? | |
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) | |||
Formatting | 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. Do you think instead of maintaining the heading format on the line you create between the bottom of the table/macro and the heading we should instead default it to a plain paragraph? I'm not sure which seems the more natural myself, interested in your thoughts. | |
Anchor Links | 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. | |
Inserting Images | 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 this definitely sounds like a bug, did you raise a support ticket? | |
Working Offline | 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 | Peter, interested in whether you were creating new pages or editing existing? How often do you need to do either ? How did you do it 3.5? If you document in a text editor did you know you can use the Insert > Wiki Markup dialog to put it straight into a page, would this work for you? | |
Anonymous x3 | 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? | ||
Find & Replace | 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. | Diego, does the find/replace functionality in 4.1 solve your issue? | |
Contribute without Access | 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? Interested in the scenario you have where the user can't be given access to edit directly, maybe security etc? | |
Matthias Basler | 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. | Matthias, interested in your use case as well and why it's not possible for you to just have access to the other Wiki if you need to contribute to it? If it's just an ad-hoc/one off thing, interested in how often you do this? | ||
Copy page structures | Anonymous | Copy/paste of complex layout, even on a mobile device | What's the use case behind this? Not something copy page can do? Have you tried copying from the Editor or View Source page? How often do you do this on a mobile versus desktop? | |
Mixed Lists | 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? | |
Behaviour of Enter | Nils Andresen | the "enter insert new paragraph"-feature makes me cranky | Nils is this in lists (like above) or other situations also? Did you know about Shift+Enter to get a new line instead of a paragraph? I've added this to the FAQ and will remove this entry shortly. | |
Updating User Macros | 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. | Eddie, do the details on Upgrading and Migrating an Existing Confluence Macro to 4.0 help? | |
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? | ||
Pasting text | 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? | |
Tutorials | 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? Have you read Whats Changed for Wiki Markup Users? Very interested in your feedback if that didn't give you what you were after. | |
Shortcuts Helper | 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? | ||
Bug when Linking | 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 | I'll try to recreate and document this in a bug ticket. | |
Cursor Placement | Don Gamble | Experiencing issues with cursor placement / cursor not being present on the screen and also selection highlighting problems | JIRA issues to be created shortly. | |
Whitespace in Sections/Columns | Matthias Basler | Working with lots of sections/columns (i.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. | ||
Cursor Placement | Fast | Cursor navigation doesn't behave as expected | Comments below. Eddie, I'll update this soon, thanks for getting back to me. | |
Paste Problems | Fast | Copy/paste doesn't work as expected | As above | |
Paste Problems | Fast | Pasting into a bulleted list causes the entire document to go bold | As above | |
Copy to/from JIRA | Alex (posted Anonymously)
| 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.
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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 |
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:
FAQ's
Commonly brought up comments which may be of use to others who are following this page
Question | Answer |
I have a script that generates Wiki Markup and wrote it to a Confluence page using the API, can I still do this? | Yes. You can still send Wiki markup to the API which will convert it to the new source format and save. See this Answers discussion. |
How can I move the cursor outside a Macro (eg: a {code} or {column} macro) without using the mouse? | You can just press the 'down' arrow until the cursor moves out of the macro and back onto the page. |
My macro that worked in 3.x no longer works for Confluence 4.0 | See Upgrading and Migrating an Existing Confluence Macro to 4.0. |
Enter/Return gives me a new paragraph, how do I just get a aline break? | Press Shift+Enter |
I take notes in meetings etc offline in a text editor, formatted with Wiki markup then add them to a page later, how can I do this now? | You can still do this as before then insert them using the 'Insert' > 'Wiki Markup' dialog. |
How can I paste content without it's formatting? | In OSX you can natively do a 'Paste and Match Style' from the Edit menu or with the keyboard shortcut Command+Option+Shift+V. Can others recommend alternatives for other OS's? |