A new way to write blog posts

Avinoam
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
May 14, 2018

Hello,

I’m a product manager with Confluence Cloud and I wanted to let the Community know of some exciting improvements to how you create and edit in Confluence. 

We're rolling these changes out gradually, so for now you'll only see them when creating a new blog post. This should appear on your site in the coming weeks, if it hasn't already.

image2018-4-28_10-36-48.png

Some highlights:

  • Improved typography, to provide a more readable line length. No more w i d e text on large monitors.
  • We've added some great new image controls, so you can now easily wrap text around images to the left or right, or even go wide with banner images.
  • Add 🌶to your page with emoji. Hundreds available, but you can even upload your own.
  • Have a bunch of text in markdown? Just paste it on the page and it'll automatically convert to rich text.
  • Need to include code? Code is now available in the plus menu. We'll even detect code on paste, and create a code block for you.

We've also focused - importantly - on increasing reliability, stability, and speed.

We'll be continuing to roll out further improvements, but there's enough great stuff that we wanted to start getting it into your hands. Our documentation has more details about exciting things to come as well as a list of changes that have already been made. 

There are a few notable things missing that we're working on, including:

  • Pasting links to Confluence pages don't auto set the title
  • Text alignment and indentation 
  • Multi-column layouts
  • Setting your image size in pixels

We'd love to know what you think! Click the "Feedback" link in the bottom right corner of the editor.

16 comments

Thomas Schlegel
Community Leader
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May 15, 2018

@Avinoam - the images are broken

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Avinoam
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
May 15, 2018

Thanks, Thomas! I just fixed it. Please let me know if it's working now!

Rudy Holtkamp
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
May 16, 2018

It is.

Thomas Schlegel
Community Leader
Community Leader
Community Leaders are connectors, ambassadors, and mentors. On the online community, they serve as thought leaders, product experts, and moderators.
May 16, 2018

@Avinoam - yes, I can see the pictures now, thank you.

Harneet Kochar July 10, 2018

@Avinoam How do I use HTML markup in the new release ? 

Avinoam
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
July 11, 2018

Hi @Harneet Kochar! HTML markup isn't available as part of Confluence Cloud at this time. Perhaps the code macro may help in what you are looking to achieve.

Harneet Kochar July 12, 2018

@Avinoam Any particular reason why we removed HTML markup ? We use it for all sorts of formatting (Different fonts, font sizes, alignment etc.) 

Deleted user July 12, 2018

Hi there, a couple of questions about the new blog post format. The new posts are now being centered in the page, leaving a lot of white space on the sides, especially on the left of the page. Is there a way to format the blog so it occupies the entire page and all the information can display better. Capture.JPG

Avinoam
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
July 12, 2018

Hi @[deleted] and thanks for asking this great question!

As you've noticed and pointed out we are optimizing for better readability and predictability of content which also has some additional benefits such as:

• Your line length won't change when you're viewing content regardless of if the sidebar is expanded or collapsed.
• Your text won't reflow when inline comments are visible or hidden.
• It encourages pages to have a more predictable experience on mobile as well.

With that being said - Tables, macros, and images all have in-context menus that let you make them display as wide or full-width.

Deleted user July 13, 2018

Thanks for the explanation @Avinoam, now to my second question, before I was able to easily change the size of an image by simply selecting on the image and defining the size, now that options do not seem possible anymore, can you tell me how you can manually change the size of the image while in Confluence.?

Avinoam
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
July 13, 2018

Another great question @[deleted].

At the end of the above post I tried to point out that there are a few notable things missing that we're working on, including:

  • Pasting links to Confluence pages don't auto set the title
  • Text alignment and indentation 
  • Multi-column layouts
  • Setting your image size in pixels

So, at this time you can't set the exact size like you used to. However, in the meantime you can change the images layout to either be fixed, wide or full width or inline to the right or left of your text.

Deleted user July 16, 2018

Thanks for the feedback, I did not pay too much attention to the initial post, but now I did :)  Looking forward to seeing the new updates.. 

Pablo Marin-Garcia September 5, 2018

Great work! but there is something I am missing a lot in the new editing tools. Despite the new way of preconfigured panels for info, warning,etc. is ver helpful for writing some technical documentation in final format, I am missing the plain {panel} behaviour in the new /panel widget. I was using {panel} as a container to paste large content with images, and keep separate from the next block or my own annotations. The new panels do not allow pasting content with images. The panel ends above the first image and the image and rest of pasted content is rendered outside the panel. I can achieve the same block effect adding a single cell of a table but in the new editor inserting only one cell means, insert a table and remove two columns and two rows one by one. It is too much distraction compared with the simple {panel} typing on the old editor. 

Is it possible to have a simple /panel as before? and one that you can edit the title as well?

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Avinoam
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
September 7, 2018

Thanks for the feedback @Pablo Marin-Garcia! Have you tried perhaps using the Horizontal Rule for that purpose? You can add by either going to the + menu in the main toolbar or by simply typing in "/horizontal" and it will come up.

Kojnok Roberta February 5, 2019

I totally agree with @Pablo Marin-Garcia! I am working with the new editor in the last few days and I really miss the panel macro. Please, add the "old" and simple panel macro in the new editor or make the existing ones configurable!

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Sharon Helms
Rising Star
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February 26, 2019

+1 for bringing back the simple panel macro, please! We use it on nearly every page.

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Avinoam
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
February 27, 2019

@Sharon Helms can you please elaborate on what you mean by simple panel macro vs. using the /panel or /info, /warning, /note etc. ?

Sharon Helms
Rising Star
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February 27, 2019

In the old editor, we use the "panel" macro to set off text, as it gives us the option to add a custom background color or no background color at all. This is in contrast to the other macros, such as "note" or "info" that add a predefined background color and optional icon and title.

When I was able to test the Fabric editor (the option to test the editor looks like it has been removed from our instances?) the available panel options were limited to the predefined /info, /warning, and /note -- with no option to remove the associated icon, change the color, or choose no color at all.

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Deleted user September 10, 2018

I recently learnt about the great "Decision" macro but cannot seem to figure out when it is available and when not... (see link below)

Is this perhaps caused by the roll-out of these editor changes?

As a product owner/project manager, not being able to capture (also small) decisions is quite a impediment.

 

P.S. Also asked on the community but no answer there: Some pages do not have the "Decision" macro available?

AhmadDanial
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
September 10, 2018

Hi again, Jeroen!

I just want to let you know that I have responded to the question that you have in Some pages do not have the "Decision" macro available?. Feel free to ask me any further questions if you have. Thanks.

Deleted user September 12, 2018

Thanks! Found it. If I understand correctly, that somewhere in the not to distant future, I can make use of Action and Decision macros in all pages in Confluence, that would be great news!

Dieter Blomme September 19, 2018

My main question is: besides showing something differently on the page, what does the decision macro do? Can you create an overview of all decisions like you could with the decision log before?

Robert Watkins
Rising Star
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October 15, 2018

Further on Dieter's question - are there any plans to integrate this with the Decision Log?

Mohamed Mohamedin September 11, 2018

Hi,

I'm trying to make our macro compatible with the new editor. Can you point me to a migration tutorial. We want to be ready when this editor is generalized.

Thanks

Mohamed Mohamedin September 17, 2018

Can anyone help me. 

Currently, our macro editor is broken in the new editor (the case with many famous plugins also) and once the new editor is applied to other pages types we will be in a bad situation with many angry customers.

Victor Debone September 12, 2018

Hi,

Will this powerful editor be available for other pages than blogs?

Avinoam
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
September 12, 2018

Hi @Victor Debone!

Yes, we're rolling out the new editing experience gradually and it should become available for more page types in the upcoming months. It's currently available for most blogs and meeting notes.

Ben Arundel October 2, 2018

how do I get the text to alight to the left? why is it in the centre? 

stormmore October 18, 2018

I really wish the blog post editor was the same editor for the rest of confluence. It is an inconsistent experience and blocks the ability to write blog posts on the mobile client!

Dan Streeter November 8, 2018

Hi, I've been advised by Shannon Spaniol to refer her rather than on another community post as all comments are tracking here instead. I'll copy verbatim so there is no crossover of comms between the two sources:

The other post is here, and was in context of changing back to the old editor.

Wow - you cant roll it back!? Thats AWEFUL!

The new layout is really a backwards step to documentation, yes, its more lightweight and 'focussed' - but some of us like to use the simple, basic text formatting tools like justification and indentation to name just two 'standard' features.

Not to mention you've seemingly removed the ability to use '{' as a shortcut for macros... which is a pivotal feature of writing content in Confleunce.

Yeh - theres a button to do it, but a 'meeting' is not usually a place where time can be spent carefully moving a mouse/trackpad around the screen to get to what you need, its fast paced: notes are taken at talking speed, and taking the ability away to rapidly type 'well known, used constantly throughout the day' shortcuts is a productivity killer.

 

Really Atlassian - a big fail on this one... taking tried, tested and known working functionality and process away from the users without a way back!

I've already raised feedback to the above, but sadly - in line with the majority of community feelings around Atlassians uptake of user requests... feel as though we're stuck with this new 'update'...

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Victor Debone November 8, 2018

Hey @Dan Streeter,

As far as I know, the ability to use '{' was not removed, but substituted by '/' :) Can you try that or '/' doesn't work for you as well?

Kind Regards

Dan Streeter November 8, 2018

Yay, thats one thing returned... or changed... - now I've got to remember than if I'm doing a meeting I use /, and for the rest of my life, use {...

I appreciate that it looks as though your intent is to migrate all pages to this 'new improved' way of editing... but you've effectively introduced a non backwards compatible breaking change to your software, causing existing users to have difficulties in things they have been doing for a very long time.

I'll admit - I hadn't read the documentation of the release, partly as I'm quite busy and a document of such size with the reasons of 'being able to carry on with my job' wasn't high on my list of priorities - and in honesty, I wouldn't expect ANY software provider to change such basic, foundational functionality without either a route back to the preferred old way, or some deprecation period of both { and / being in play with advice of "You're using {, please start using / because of (link to documentation)".

 

Thanks for your reply though, at least that aspect of meeting notes has been mitigated.

Dan Streeter November 12, 2018

Could you advise, before I was to report a bug...

I'm using the Task Report Table macro with the '/' which now loads it live instead of in a little macro placeholder like on any other page which is nice.

However, when editing the properties of that Macro, specifically limiting the space to where tasks are yielded from, no helper appears when typing like it does in the normal pages and it just leaves you to type a string.

2018-11-12 09-55-30 - Edit - SMT - Confluence(1)(1).png2018-11-12 09-58-42 - 2018-11-12 Meeting notes - SMT - Confluence(1)(1).png

Even when this matches the space you want, the tasks are not limited - therefore you get ALL tasks across the application, not just ones from the filter you wish for.

I've done the following search in Jira and cant seem to find an existing bug for it, so either its more 'new functionality' that removes known functions, or an unknown bug.

I'd be grateful for some advice.

Thanks

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Victor Debone November 12, 2018

I tried in mine and it seems that it's not working as well and this seems to be a real bug, without the autocomplete it's very hard to select a page or space.

Dan Streeter November 12, 2018

Thanks Victor - Anyone know the correct process for reporting this if required.

 

Also just found that heading shortcuts do not work in the new meeting template either - very annoying.

Usually CMD+[1-4] (On a mac) make the text a heading, not any more, unless the shortcuts have changed and I missed that bit also =(

Victor Debone November 12, 2018

You're welcome. I think there's not much of a thought, you can report the bug on the project you've indicated.

 

For the headings, yes, they are working in a different way. The new Confluence editor standardized on Markdown. To create a heading you need to start a new line, type # and space. The number of #'s typed before the space will generate the according heading level, so if you want a H3, you create a new line, type ### and space.

If you check the Markdown cheatsheet you will find this and other markup that work now in the new editor. Here's a reference.

Dan Streeter November 12, 2018

Markdown - Awesome.

Replacing functionality with new functionality without backwards compat.. Annoying.

Myself - as a dev minded individual, appreciate the introduction of Markdown, my colleagues who wouldnt know the different between an 'int' and a 'string' - and use Word on a daily basis for other aspects of work, will find having to learn a programatic appraoch to the simple task of 'writing' incredibly annoying.

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stormmore November 12, 2018

It feels like Markdown is a step backwards, didn't Atlassian get ride of Markup due to not wanting to support WYISWYG and it in the editor at the same time? I remember the stink when that happening!

Victor Debone November 13, 2018

I'm not that sure about non-technical colleagues, Markdown is almost an internet standard and you can be safe that the initial hiccup of telling people to use ** and __ around their words will greatly pay-off, for example any note-taking or messaging app uses it. And it doesn't mean you cannot use the shortcuts or the interface to make your text styled, the basic ones still are there. You can check the keyboard shortcuts by pressing Control (Cmd on Mac) + / or clicking on the question mark on the left bottom of the editor.

colinb January 15, 2019

Would like to be able to toggle back to the old editor. The centering of content in the page is not helpful at all.

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colinb March 13, 2019

My submission to the product backlog - https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFCLOUD-65447

Andrew Ashbacher January 17, 2019

+1 for being able to revert to old editor.  The new editor opted for aesthetics of content over functionality of content.  It feels to me like it's focused on marketing and sales teams, and less on product and engineering teams.  I hear the argument is that it now works better on mobile, but I would imagine that usage on mobile is secondary for most organizations.  Perhaps this change improves usage on mobile, but it has definitely made usage on desktop secondary.

There needs to be an option either at the space-level or page-level for which editor to use.  I used to really love Confluence and was looked to as a guru within my organization for helping others be effective with Confluence.  This change has added pain to my working day.  I am now on the search for other options for organizing and communicating information with others.

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Tomas Junger January 17, 2019

I agree with Andrew, the option with change formatting with older editor will be very useful. Some macros are not compatible with new content formatting and I don´t imagine how many adds-on must be recoded for new editor.

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Tom February 5, 2019

Is it really the plan to roll this out to ALL confluence pages?  I get the allure of trying to appeal to a hip young crowd, but what about your existing customers that have a large library of pages that are all about to look awful and all must be hand edited back to  a semblance of presentability.

Just to name a few issues:

  • The Section macro.  We use it rather heavily across our pages.
  • Full page width, instead of limited column space.
    • I'm not writing a blog, I'm documenting complex business and technical processes and I want my page width that allows me to format the document with sections and create whatever structure I needed for a given task. (Add a nav bar on the side, structure images on the right column, switch back and forth between 1, 2 and 3 column sections of the document, etc,)
  • I can only anticipate more issues if this is rolled out to all pages, given I ran into these issues testing just one page pasted into the new editor.

 

Any company that has done a solid job of documentation with a long history of documents will be facing months of hand editing pages to get things back into shape.  I have real work to do, not time to clean up this potential mess.  If I have to go back and edit every page, BRD and Design we've made over the years, that's a staggering workload to drop on us.

If this will apply to all pages, this feature needs a toggle to disable the new format.  I'm just hoping I'm misreading things and this is either not intended to replace confluence pages or more features will be added to bring it up to parity before it is applied to confluence pages.

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Cameron LaBorde-Zank February 7, 2019

They recently added columns back but they're missing asymmetric sizes (aka side bars). The way it currently works is that the page remains in the old format until someone edits the page and then the new editor converts the page. If the page contains elements not supported (previously this would happen with columns) then it wont load in the new editor. As far as I can tell they haven't gone back and updated pages unless someone opens and publishes the page. 

 

And yes everything else you said, its incomplete and is a mountain of work no one asked for with no clear upgrade path or strategy for injection. Also no word on timing for release or any real communication with those who are paying to use the service. Up until this week they were just rolling it out to people without telling them and then refusing to let them swap back to the old editor.

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Mike Thompson February 14, 2019

I've been using Confluence for years. Just joined a new company and created a new space in the cloud version. Moving page layout from the ribbon to the macros was a big mistake; it is used too often and the dramatic reduction in what is in the ribbon directly adds keypresses constantly. Also, the new macro for columns doesn't let you select 3 columns with the center larger than the sides. I don't understand what you're thinking. This is a HUGE step backward. Time to rethink Confluence vs. Teams.

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AndreyB February 26, 2019

No one has done so much wrong with product development as Mr. Zelenko
These are nested tables, and undo/redo buttons, and a new stub of the editor, and much more.

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Max Lorch May 16, 2019

Same goes here! I am currently thankful that our internal confluence is hosted by us...I just created for an external project a new confluence and what is wrong with that????

How can you do so much wrong with that? The tool was really good for documentation, now I really have to consider if I will need to find another product. People in Software and IT should work with that??? Don't know what you guys are thinking...

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