3 June 2011
With great pleasure, Atlassian presents our first public milestone of Confluence 4.0.
An Early Access Preview (EAP) release is a snapshot of our work in progress, primarily focused on allowing Confluence users to see the new features in advance and provide us with some useful feedback. It also gives plugin developers an opportunity to test and fix their plugins in advance of an official release.
Highlights of Confluence 4.0 EAP:
More:
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![]() | Downloading the Confluence 4.0 EAP The Confluence 4.0-m27 EAP Release is available here. When upgrading, please follow the upgrade notes below. |
![]() | Do not use in production
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Highlights of Confluence 4.0
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Simplified Editing ExperienceWe've rebuilt the Confluence editor from the ground up, to bring you an editing experience that's simpler, faster and more intuitive. |
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Introducing Macro Placeholders and New MacrosConfluence 4.0 introduces macro placeholders, a visual representation of your macros while editing. Create rich content with existing and new macros, but without them getting in the way. Easy Macro ManagementTo make macros easier to manage when editing, the editor now uses macro placeholders. Placeholders offer the following advantages:
New and Improved MacrosWe've bundled more macros with Confluence, and made some of the existing macros better, to help you easily include and present relevant content:
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Autoformatting – Write Wiki Markup In the EditorMany of Confluence's biggest fans are avid wiki markup users. For you aficionados, we wanted to give you the fastest editing experience possible, while preserving the speed and efficiency of your existing wiki markup skills. So, we present you with Autoformatting! Autoformatting lets you type wiki markup into the editor and "auto-formats" your text on the fly. To learn more, click on the "?" help button in the editor and select the "Wiki Markup" tab. Try these and see what you think:
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New Wiki Markup DialogMany people tell us they like to take notes in wiki markup, then paste them into Confluence. We've also spoken to customers who have lots of scripts that produce wiki markup and are manually inserted into pages. For these folks, we present the Wiki Markup dialog. Simply select 'Wiki Markup' from the 'Insert' menu to launch the Wiki Markup dialog. From there you can insert any wiki markup, even macros. |
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Autocomplete ImprovementsAutocomplete uses wiki markup syntax to quickly link to content, embed images and other media and insert macros into the page. If you haven't experienced autocomplete, you should see this blog post. Be sure to try the following: New Page LinksQuickly insert a link to create a page with Autocomplete for links. Simply type '[' in the editor and as you type, Confluence will display a Create Page link if a page with that title does not already exist in your current space. Instant Link, Media and Macro CreationType [, ! or { in the editor to add various kinds of content to your page:
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Introducing Confluence MentionsConfluence 4.0 includes the new Mentions feature. This allows you to easily bring in collaborators to a conversation: if you are mentioned in any Confluence content (a page, blog, comment or status update), you will be notified by email. To mention someone, type @ and their name, when editing. Mentions will first suggest people you are following in your network, so you can quickly find and involve your friends. |
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Improved Table OperationsWe've made table operations better in Confluence 4.0 with the following features: New In-Context Table ToolbarThe new table toolbar removes the need for a context menu and only appears when you add a table to the page. New Table OperationsNew table manipulation buttons are available for highlighting discrete cells, rows or columns and for copying or pasting rows. Merge and Split Table CellsYou can now merge and split cells in a table. This feature satisfies the single most popular issue on our issue tracker! |
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Improved Page Comparison FunctionalityWe've got a better way to view changed content in Confluence. Improved Page DiffsWe've simplified page diffs to make them easier to read. Additionally, page diffs now show changes to both formatting and macros. Diffs in EmailWhere possible, email notifications now show page differences as they appear in Confluence. These come through with the diff colour coding. |
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New Email DesignAll email notifications in Confluence now have a new design. This works in major email clients as well as on the iPhone. |
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New Editor Plugin Points for DevelopersWe've added more editor plugin points for developers. Notable improvements include: Extend the Macro Property PanelPlugin developers can add buttons to the Macro Property Panel in the editor. Render an Image in the Macro PlaceholderA plugin developer can render an image instead of a placeholder for bodyless macros. Here is an example, showing a Gliffy image rendered inside the editor: Custom Parameter Rendering in PlaceholdersYou can choose to display any parameter in the macro placeholder in the editor, instead of having the placeholder automatically show the first few parameters. New Pluggable Format MenuPlugin developers can add items to the editor's Format menu. See this tutorial for details. |
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Other ImprovementsAs always, we have made various small improvements to Confluence screens and functionality.
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Infrastructure ChangesThis release includes a number of improvements in the APIs and under the covers as well.
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Helping You Transition to Confluence 4.0We've created a set of resources to help you manage the transition away from wiki markup. We know your people have become experts with using wiki markup in Confluence, but we think you'll really appreciate the new editor, and we want to make it as easy as possible for you to make the change. The change management resources are listed under the current documentation. |
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We Welcome Your FeedbackTo make it easy for you to provide EAP feedback we've created a simple "Got Feedback" button in the Confluence navigation bar: |
Upgrade Notes
- Upgrading from a previous version of Confluence. Follow the normal upgrade instructions to upgrade your test instance to this release. We strongly recommend that you back up your Confluence Home directory and your database before upgrading.
- When upgrading from a previous version of Confluence, if you have customised your cache settings (as documented in Cache Performance Tuning) then you may run into memory problems during the wiki to XHTML migration. We are working to fix this in a later milestone release but in the meantime you can revert your
ehcache.xml
to the default version.- If you still experience problems you should try reducing the 'maxElementsInMemory' attribute on each cache to a very small value such as 50.
- Note that any cache changes you make to work around migration problems should only be considered temporary. You should restore caching to it's original settings again after migration has been successful.
- Note that the 'Edit Page in Word' functionality of Confluence is being removed in Confluence 4.0.
A big thank you to everyone who helps us ensure that Confluence keeps getting better and better.
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