19 March 2013

What's new in Confluence 5.1-rc2:

Introducing blueprints

Blank pages are a thing of the past. Choose 'Create' and grab a blueprint.

• Create meeting notes, shared file lists, requirements documentation and more.
• View blueprint pages and summary information on special index pages.
• Customise blueprint templates to make each blueprint do exactly what you need.
• Get more blueprints from the Atlassian Marketplace or develop your own.

The possibilities are endless. This is just the beginning.

Image titles and alt text

You can now add title and alt metadata directly from the image properties panel. Select an image and choose 'Properties'. Titles appear when you hover over an image or when viewing the full size image. Alternative (alt) text is available to screen readers and when an image cannot be shown. Border effects have also been moved to the 'Properties' option.

Quick access to admin functions via search box

Start typing what you want to do into the Confluence search box. The matching administrative functions will appear with a cog icon at the top of the search results.

It's even faster via 'GG': Press 'G' twice on your keyboard to put your cursor in the search box, then continue typing the action you want. If you use JIRA, you will recognise the 'GG' combination because the same shortcut opens the JIRA administration search dialog.

System administration, Confluence administration and space administration options may appear in the search results. You will only see the options that you have permission to perform.

New and improved macros

A new macro satisfies a popular request: you can now add a button to a page, to create content based on a template. We're also continuing to make our existing macros look and work even better.

• Create from Template macro
  New in Confluence 5.1! This macro displays a button on a page, linked to a specific template. When someone chooses the button, the macro opens the editor, ready to add a new page, and adds content to the page based on the given template.
  

• Attachments macro
  This macro has been given a facelift. You can now expand each file in the list to view its labels and version history, and to view, edit or remove the attachment.  See this macro in action in the file list blueprint.
• Page Properties Report macro
  This macro has new parameters. You can now specify spaces to show data from and the columns to include in the report. See this macro in action in the requirements blueprint.
  
• PDF and PowerPoint view file macros 
  These macros have been updated to use HTML5 instead of Flash. This means your content loads faster and can be viewed on a wider range of devices. 
• Status macro
  This macro has also received some love. The status lozenge is now thinner and allows you to choose between a solid or outline style. We've also added blue to the range of colours.

More goodness

Autocomplete when restricting a page to a group

Love it when Confluence autocompletes the username for you when restricting a page? Now autocomplete is also available when you want to restrict a page to a group. 

Searching the Create dialog

Confluence 5.0 introduced the Create dialog. Now we've added a handy search field to help you find the template or blueprint
you need fast. Why scroll when you can search!

PDF export improvements

We have improved the way our PDF export handles images, making spaces with lots of images export more efficiently.

Workbox notifications

Notifications in your workbox will be automatically marked as 'read' if you have already viewed the page or blog post. Nice!

Templates - now with added instructions

You can now add instructional text to your templates. This text is only visible in the editor and disappears when the author of the page begins typing. You can find this handy feature under the new 'Templates' menu in the template editor, along with variables.

Infrastructure changes

These are points of interest to plugin and add-on developers. For a full description of these changes, please see our guide to preparing for Confluence 5.1.

Labels tidied up

We have simplified and improved the labels code, and added some REST resources:

• We have deleted two Velocity (vm) files. Please adjust any plugins that use them:
  • label-listitems.vm – This provided a for-each loop over another template. You should be able to get the same functionality from labels-list.vm.
  • labels-dialog.vm – We now use the Soy version of this template.
• Labels now follow the ADG/AUI Labels guidelines. Your plugin should use these guidelines too, so that it automatically inherits AUI changes in future releases.