What's in this release?

New styles (Atlassian Design Guidelines)

Confluence 5.0 introduces a modernised look and feel that is consistent with other Atlassian applications and follows the new Atlassian Design Guidelines. The main focus of development for m3 has been on the Dashboard, View Page, Editor and Login screen.

For plugin developers: This milestone includes a major upgrade to AUI 5.0-m13 (the Atlassian User Interface). This will also update the version of jQuery that Confluence supports. Your plugin will look different if it uses AUI. If it does not yet use AUI, your plugin will look out of place in Confluence 5.0. We recommend that you follow the new Atlassian Design Guidelines.

To see specific changes in this and future milestone releases, please view the Atlassian UI Updates page on our developer documentation site.

You can enable and disable the new styles in this milestone release via the option in the user menu, as shown below:

New header

We have made a number of changes to the header, to improve cross-product consistency, usability, and visual design.

• Switching between applications - If you have Confluence linked to JIRA, another Confluence server or another Atlassian application via Application Links, you can quickly switch to those applications via the header. You can also add links to other non-Atlassian applications.

• Moved Browse menu - The browse menu has moved to the left next to the other navigation-related links. In future milestones, the browse menu will be removed. In addition, 'people' and 'spaces' will become top-level menu items, and space-related browse items will move into a new space sidebar. (See 'Plugin Developer Notices' below.)
• Consolidated Help menu - Help links, like admin help, end user help and the link to keyboard shortcuts, have been consolidated into one menu item.
• Consolidated Aministrator menu - Site administrators will be able to access plugin management, user management and general admin settings directly from the cog icon in the header.
• User menu - All your personal settings can be accessed from user menu. Instead of displaying your username, we now display your profile picture for compactness and to minimise confusion.
• Breadcrumbs - Breadcrumbs have moved out of the header and now reside directly below the header.

In-page notifications

In Confluence 4.3 we introduced workbox notifications so you can access your Confluence notifications from within the Confluence header. Now in 5.0 you can access notifications directly within the page you're viewing!

Let's say you are viewing a page, and someone adds a comment to that page, or updates the page. Now you'll know about it immediately.

New mobile render mode for macros

Have you written a Confluence macro as a plugin? In Confluence 4.3.2 and later, you can make your macros work in Confluence mobile. For many macros there is little effort involved. Confluence mobile will render a macro if it contains a device type specification of "mobile". For more complex macros, you may need to convert the CSS and JavaScript too. Details are in this document: Making your macro render in Confluence mobile.

Other improvements

• (Added in 4.3.2) The Excerpt Include macro can now include content from another space. When you type the name of the page into the Excerpt Include macro dialog, Confluence will offer a list of matching pages, including those from other spaces.

• (Added in 4.3.2) You can now put one Expand macro inside another, and Confluence will correctly show and hide the contents of all Expand macros, including the nested ones. Here is an example.

• (Added in 4.3.3) Confluence mobile now supports the default browser on Android devices (Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich) as well as iOS. See Supported Platforms for details.

• (Added in 4.3.2) We have made a large number of macros compatible with Confluence mobile. This means that many more macros will now work as expected when you access a page on your iPhone or iPad. The following bundled macros work in Confluence mobile:

  Change-History Macro Chart Macro Cheese Macro Children Display Macro Column Macro Content by Label Macro Contributors Summary Macro   Details Summary Macro Excerpt Include Macro Excerpt Macro Global Reports Macro HTML Include Macro HTML Macro IM Presence Macro Include Page Macro Info Macro Labels List Macro Loremipsum Macro Page Properties Macro Multimedia Macro Noformat Macro Note Macro Panel Macro Popular Labels Macro Profile Picture Macro Recently Used Labels Macro Related Labels Macro RSS Feed Macro Search Results Macro Section Macro Space Jump Macro Status Macro Table of Contents Macro Table of Content Zone Macro Tip Macro View File Macro Warning Macro Widget Connector Macro

  Are you using the Zen Foundation theme? All the Zen macros work in Confluence mobile now too.

In-app notifications from JIRA and other Confluence sites

Wishing you could have all your notifications in just one spot? Your Confluence workbox can now display notifications from JIRA and from other Confluence sites. To receive JIRA notifications, you need JIRA 5.2 or later. Follow the guide to Configuring Workbox Notifications, then see the power of workbox in action. More...