The new editing experience: we're listening

[Bad Developer]

This post is triggered by me trying to setup some new pages using the new editor.

I am a long time Confluence and Jira user.  I started promoting Confluence Cloud at my growing company a few years ago.  It was good for the first year but now the new editor is making that very difficult. Sure the old editor was getting bloated with crazy macros and so on, but once you learned how to do something the experience was predictable and consistent.

That is not the case anymore.  The new experience is severely feature INCOMPLETE and buggy.  Very disappointed. I am having a hard time promoting confluence to others because as I try to cross train, things I assume to happen do not not always happen.

I feel compelled to post this because this article links to its company values .  The ironic part is that this experience has shown me that in this case they have not followed their own values.  1) Don't f*ck with the customer and 2) Build heart and balance/"measure twice and cut once" were specifically NOT followed.

The other thing that bothers me is that Atlassian has positioned itself as a Leader in Agile software development. I am long time developer and now a development manager. I just want to get shit done and fighting with simple page layouts is not something I can afford to deal with.

I am tired of hunting down random blog posts, detailed roadmaps and old jira issues to find out where things are at.

Maybe I missed it but what I really want is a single article authored by the head Confluence product manager that owns up to the problems that exist with the editor and provides a high level description of what they acknowledge needs to be fixed. Then provide updates every two weeks as to 1) what was fixed 2) what is being worked on.

Was there ever a feedback survey sent out? I would fill that out.

Thanks for listening.

[Bad Developer]

Alright, here I go again.  I am trying to setup some easy to use documentation standards for my team and am running into the same missing features and bugs that been around from the start of the new editor.  Following my previous post above, I am now at a point where every little bug and missing feature frustrates me more than ever.  Typically if a customer is under the impression that the company is trying, they would have more patience for this is type of stuff.

So the first thing is, with respect @Avinoamyou/Atlassian are not listening.

The second thing is why are there so many basic features missing? 

• I want to create a page template with full width text width but that option does not exist. No problem, I will pop in a Layout macro.  oh wait..
• The Layout macro does not include a full with option either. Dead end. So my pages will be 3/4 width.
• Panel Macro:
  • Where is the option to exclude the icon and background color? I liked being able to add an outline around a paragraph.  I think my only choice is to add a single cell table?  So now I am doing page layout with HTML tables like 2002?  Nice.
  • How can I move an existing panel containing text? I cannot drag and drop.  Also when I cut and paste, it will only paste the internal text.  THEN if I try create a new empty panel and paste the text, it will create another empty panel and have to delete the second. Your team does not have access to QA?
• Cursor:
  • I cannot even see where the cursor is half of the time. I need to hit enter to see what moves.  Sheesh
  • It often feels like the cursor is being moved around depending on the macro or area of the page.

If by chance I have missed a simple solution to any of the above, my answer is that it should not have been that complicated in the first place. Other posters have started to referring to the editor at the kids editor. That made me laugh.

I have been using Confluence and Jira since version one of both and have often been the Confluence advocate at the company. Now when developers ask me what is going with Confluence, I tell them I don't know.  So thanks for that.

[Jiri]

Its not working. I have 4K monitor and the content seems to go maximum to 1800.

we're listening - are you sure?

[Aline Chapman]

Hi Community-

Atlassian created a ticket to gather interest on having the admin level setting for full-width pages, please vote and watch if you wish. Thanks!

https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-71432?error=login_required&error_description=Login+required&state=8529cdeb-32ad-41c3-b0b9-5c164cc15803

[Jeanne Howe]

A new feature request has been created to allow Confluence Admins to set the "default" editor. As an Admin we should be able to set the editor to either new the Fabric editor or to the editor that actually works (Legacy). Even though it appears Atlassian is NOT listening, please take a moment to vote for the issue.

Option to have the older template selection instead of the in-editor template selection 

[Mads]

Almost two years of listening - can you start acting please?

The list of missing features or genuine bugs related to the new editor is actually growing it would seem, rather than being reduced.

Please Atlassian. The editor is at the core of our daily work. Please, please, please assign more resources to improving it.

[John Fowler]

I echo above comments, and am disappointed that the old view is being broken (it doesn't open images from thumbnails any more) to push us to the new one.

What happened your core value "Don’t #@!% the customer."?

[Drory Ben-Menachem]

Appreciating the improvements to the new editor, but really confused by the decision to lock down the ability to inject custom CSS in Cloud, and to define such narrow formatting parameters for column DIVs in layouts.  32px is an insufficient margin between columns for most content scenarios, as it creates a higher cognitive load on the reader — especially those with DISABILITIES like low-vision or Dyslexia.

It seems as though adding the ability to edit a single CSS parameter — .hBbeFo — would enable a more accessible experience.

[Angela Greaves]

They seem to be pushing customers towards the 'sustain your own environment' solution (Data Center), no longer providing for less than 5 TW environments, or TWing freelancers.

It's disappointing. The only kind of customer they stopped serving is the kind that actually made them grow so big...the authoring is dumbed down to kindergarden toy colors and interface. Our commands and paths added using the old editor (blue1, #0000FF, aka 0,0,255)...with the new editor colors, our documentation content doesn't look serious anymore, they have to be light blue (rgb(76, 154, 255) - their code does not even contain the hex anymore!)...No adult colors available, just these sugary, childish, hip designer shades...the '76/154/255-blue' looks like my toy kitchen when I was 5....! the other colors are not readable in a documentation. 

VERY irritating, because a product documentation is at least as much about branding, as the content...certainly not about appealing to kids with its look&feel.

And these irritating autocorrect emojis...why an earth is that a default function, it's beyond me...they call it 'keyboard shortcut' when everyone else calls it 'autocorrect'...emoticons are NOT part of the list of keyboard shortcuts (that are shortcuts to functions, not to emotion-expressing graphic stickers...!) Not even mentioning that if you want to disable the Autocorrect for emoticons, you have to disable ALL keyboard shortcuts for content editing entirely! ...just to get rid of the stupid autocorrect smileys in my documentation spaces. Confluence guys, stop being hip kids, start being working adults. 

I used to promote Confluence Wiki as a stable, consistent and lightweight Documentation authoring tool + CMS + production tool for our company, a better investment for our less-than-10K pages long documentation, so we don't have to spend on the 'old school' pipeline's documentation products (each cca 250-1K USD / year per 5 user...)...it took me years to get the management and the colleagues on board. It used to be a brilliant choice for us, but I'm less and less able to  defend this choice as we go...

All I do is duplicate old articles (written using the old editor that is for adults) and ban everyone from switching/converting pages to the new editor (the 'Duplo version') when editing an article.

Who needs this kind of distraction in their daily work. 

[Alex Li]

Full-width view still have a limit,
I am using a 65" TV as an external monitor, when opening a Confluence(cloud) page, it wasted a lot of space on both left and right side of the screen.

Could that Full-width view limit be removed?

Thanks,