Possible workaround for missing div and span macros?

Question

Hello, I have been heavily using the div and span macro for all kinds of self-created CSS styles for my PDF exports (page breaks, background colours, running headlines, pages in landscape mode, ...). As I am still working on a very old Confluence version (4.3.7), this hasn't been a problem so far. But, as I have learned, in newer version these macros will be missing. So, how can I make sure that I can still use all these styles for old and new pages? How can I still include div and span in my Confluence pages? Here is my very simple idea: I include them in the page's html code with the Firefox developer tools. For my page breaks I would add "

...

" as an example. When I try this in my Confluence pages now, it seems to work with no problem. But reading some of the feedback pages about the macro removals like https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-65774?error=login_required&error_description=Login+required&state=95f7e532-0a60-4a12-96fb-72653153bd69 I there doesn't seem to be any hint about this possibility. Am I missing something and this will not work in newer Confluence version?

Bill Bailey · Answer

Along the lines of teaching someone to fish rather than giving them a fish ;-) There is the link to the basics:

writing-user-macros

And there is a no-print example macro that uses a div tag exactly the way you would need to do it for you needs.

The color as size example below it shows an example with span tags.

Enjoy!

Steffen Heller · Answer

Can you post your code? Are there other up-to-date places where people exchange user macros?
I had the impression that the div and span macro is missed by many but don't seem to find much information about what people do about it.

Bill Bailey · Answer

The most rock-solid way is the create a user macro that wraps you content in these tags. I know I have used it in classed p div tags as last as version 6.13.8