I can't believe Atlassian is doing it again. For those who don't know, 5-8 year ago, Jira Cloud was cursed with this awfully ugly sidebar layout, everyone hated it. Users saw what Jira Server (ya know, the classic Jira layout) looked like and asked how we can switch to that. "Sorry, we're on Cloud unfortunately," is all I could reply with. Then, Atlassian finally listened, after years of complaining, and changed Jira Cloud's layout to resemble Jira Server, which is what we have today and which is what we're losing. Now, the big brains in Atlassian, decide, yet again, to FORCE everyone back to an inferior layout, and this time forcing it on Confluence as well. This is clearly just developer churn. Step 1: Create product everyone likes. Step 2: Alter product in a way that everybody hates in order to justify working on something new. Step 3: Ignore feedback for a few years. Step 4: After some time, "fix" the problem and alter the product back to the way people liked it. Step 5: Claim that you listened to community and you're the savior of said product. Step 6: Repeat.
Nobody asked for this new layout style, this is clearly just churn where developers just do new stuff just to pad their resume and can claim innovation, despite going against what the actual users and admins want. All the while, they give you ZERO option to opt-out. These developers cannot be bothered to fix the THOUSANDS of requests to fix issues with the platform itself because that isn't sexy and fixing an issue that people have been requesting for years just wastes developer time because they like having a product that has deficiencies, as long as it looks like you're doing something new. "Oh, can't fix that, it's in the backlog, it must be a bug with the new layout. Sorry." Instead of fixing the cracks in the walls, they just decide to apply a fresh coat of paint, because fixing the cracks would mean they would have to fix the foundation; and which is easier and cheaper?
I can't believe we have to go through this garbage sidebar once again. I thought those days were over. Oh, and you think this rant of mine is new? I was saying the exact same thing when they changed the layout to sidebar, suffered for years with it, and then they came back and changed it back and claimed to deserve all the praise for their innovation.
Mark my words, in 5 years or less, they will revert Jira and Confluence back to how it looks today, or close to it.