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Open company, no bullshit
A Message from Atlassian's Founders
Hi there,
Most of you already know why we removed the wiki markup editor in Confluence 4.0. We pride ourselves on being an open company, so it should be no surprise that we were really upset to learn that a few customers felt we had 'betrayed them' with this decision.
Firstly, to those people, we are genuinely sorry that you did not know about this change. We want you to know that we fully understood the enormity of this change for our existing customers - hence why we began communicating our plans over a year in advance in order to give everyone ample time to prepare. We started this process 15 months before shipping Confluence 4.0. During this period we made many public announcements about our intentions, collected tons of feedback throughout our Early Access Program, and built a comprehensive set of resources including:
- June 2010 - At Summit 2010 we publicly announced our plans to consolidate the wiki markup and rich text editors into one single editor in Confluence 4.0
- July 2010 - Released an FAQ about the changes we had planned. Over the year we received a lot of questions and updated the FAQ very frequently
- December 2010 - Atlassian began using Confluence 4.0 in production internally and began gathering feedback from heavy wiki markup users
- June 2011 - Released a comprehensive Early Access Program ("EAP") where customers could download 4.0 and provide feedback. We received and responded to over 250 pieces of feedback during the Early Access Program
- June 2011- Included with the EAP we released a comprehensive set of "change management" documentation including:
- A comprehensive set of release notes describing every new feature and planned change in 4.0
- A comprehensive planning guide for Administrators, End Users and Developers
- A quick-guide to help administrators prepare
- June - September 2011 - Frequently updated EAP releases where we collected customer feedback and responded with changes / fixes
- September 2011 - Released Confluence 4.0 with a microsite to help users discover new features and a complete change guide to help avid wiki markup users learn to be efficient in the new editor
If you did not hear about the new editor via all of these communiques, we're sorry. We will endeavour to communicate even more in the future, especially should there be another such major update.
Collective customer feedback drove this decision
We listen to our customers – a lot. The number one reason we made the decision to remove the wiki markup editor was the collective feedback we'd been gathering since we first released Confluence in 2004.
We've always encouraged you to publicly tell us how we can improve our products and make them work better for your organisation. We can't think of another company that is as open as Atlassian and we're proud of that.
Looking at the feedback we received and the things we heard time and time again in countless customer interviews, it was clear as day that the dual editing experience – Wiki Markup and Rich Text – was the number one hindrance to Confluence adoption.
The endless cycle of round-tripping bugs made the editor unreliable and unusable for the majority of users, and the lack of advanced features like the ability to merge table cells was stopping you from seeing the full value of Confluence.
You told us these things, we listened, and replacing wiki markup was the most viable solution to giving you what customers collectively asked for, a kick-ass editing experience with more powerful editing features.
Customers love the new editor
Has it been all bad news? No - far from it. We've been thrilled with the overall response from customers so far. Here's a sample of the feedback we've been seeing about the new editor in Confluence 4 – there's much much, much more. I didn't have time to list all of the tweets, emails and "Contact the CEO" submissions we've received:
Yet... there are two sides to every story
Up front communication and listening to users aside, we're not blind to the fact that there are customers who were completely happy with the wiki markup editor and don't see the need for a change.
Don't get us wrong, we do understand their point of view. They just want a wiki markup editor and we understand their frustration at our decision to replace it with a higher fidelity storage format.
We still believe we made the best decision based on the collective feedback we received from the majority of our customers over the years – but, being completely frank, wiki markup is not coming back. The new editor is our path going forward.
We've been listening to your feedback
Thanks to all of you who took the time to provide constructive feedback about the new editor. You've helped us highlight issues that we need to address. Our Confluence team has been working really hard to get the following features and fixes into your hands:
1. Find and Replace within the editor – shipped in Confluence 4.1
2. Wiki Markup Autoformatting for Macros, Links, and Images – shipped in Confluence 4.1.2
3. WYSIWYG Page Layouts – coming in Confluence 4.2
4. WYSIWYG Page Templates – on our short-term roadmap
We're 110% committed to making the new editor an even more kick-ass, reliable editing experience. Truly the best editing experience in the world. We've made huge leaps in the last year - but we're not done yet.
We have a team of passionate, dedicated developers working full time to improve the editor and address niggles that arise.
We're building a source editor!
We've learned from your feedback that customers have a number of valid reasons for directly editing the source of a page:
- They feel locked-in - Because people were no longer able to edit a text based version of their page directly, they felt they were locked into Confluence. While you could always still get your content out via the API or through WebDAV but people wanted to be able to see it directly. This was never our intention and we're rectifying it in two ways as you will see below.
- They want to fix formatting niggles - Unfortunately over the years we trained everyone on this - what do you do when you hit a bug in the RTE? Switch to wiki markup. This wasn't really acceptable then and definitely isn't now, but people have asked for it over and over.
- Content workflows - We underestimated how many people copy the source of their page out of Confluence to work with it in other ways, whether it be updating content offline, sharing with others via email, or using a preferred text editor for things like bulk changing of link properties.
Since we realise how important source access is to you, we're currently working on a free "Advanced Editor" plugin that will allow your users to edit your page's source amongst other advanced user editing. We hope it will address the major issues that some users have identified, like the ability to search for and update URLs and the file names of embedded images.
You can check out and comment on the spec at Specification - Confluence Advanced Editor.
The beta for this plugin is now available on the plugin exchange under the name Confluence Source Editor.
We welcome your feedback - please file issues in the JIRA project at https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/SOURCE
Storage Format
Some people have questioned whether this is a vendor lock-in play. It is not. The new storage format is based on XHTML with extension tags for Confluence specific functions. We've begun documenting it here so you can see exactly what is happening under the covers - to use in your plugins, remote applications, scripts, integrations etc. I think you'll agree this is pretty "standard stuff" and able to be understood by those who need to script it.
Why didn't we do this in the first place?
When we shipped Confluence 4.0 we decided to not offer a source editor for a number of reasons. First of all, the new source XHTML format is more complex than wiki markup so it's not as readable to the average user. Secondly, we wanted to protect less technical users from breaking their pages by accidentally deleting a closing tag or entering invalid HTML. This is why we're proposing that the source editing plugin is only enabled for your advanced users - and the storage format is not meant for day-to-day human editing.
Just try it.
Seriously, I encourage you to give the new editor a go. Listening to your feedback we've seen that many of you have not yet tried the new editor. We spent a lot of time thinking about what most people use wiki markup for - why people love it - and we determined that it was speed. Speed to be able to create content without picking up your mouse. So we've built many features and made design decisions with this in mind.
If you haven't already, please give these editor features a try:
- Autoformatting of Wiki Markup
- Autocomplete for Links, Media, and Macros
- Autoconvert for Pasted Links
If you still feel that you just cannot live without wiki markup, there are many other wikis which have it as their lingua franca. We're happy to provide a list of other wiki solutions, although I assure you none are as feature rich or flexible as Confluence.
We won't stop listening
As I mentioned, we'd love your feedback on the following:
We see Confluence changing the way a company works and collaborates. That amazing change is why we come to work every day. Please help us make it a reality for you at your company.
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
Require More Discussion
Additional Ideas
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 insert just a line 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? For Chromium on Linux use the context menu: right click/Paste As Plain Text. |
I want to edit the raw XHTML Storage Format of a page. I want to use an external text editor. | Arsenale's "Invisible Ink" plugin will let you enable the ability to edit the XHTML Storage format of a page for specific user groups. This is available here on PAC. Please note this is supported by Arsenale, not Atlassian. It's currently in beta. The plugin works by giving you an additional 'Edit Storage Format' item in the Tools menu. |
When you're authoring a long list of such proposed pages that need to be created, it's not uncommon to change your mind about specific wording as you go. What's the fastest way to do this now? | This would most easily be done using the Insert > Wiki markup dialog (command+shift+d) and working the way you would have previously with markup. |
How can I quickly turn already entered text into a link | You can highlight the string you want to convert, press [ and wait until the autocomplete menu appears then select from the available options to Search for a page with the title of that text, insert a web link with that text as the clickable link or to insert a link to create a page with that title. |
A short "how-to" from Shannon Greywalker for doing unbalanced tables, tables within tables, etc. in the new 4.x editor. | Available here. |