What just happened to Confluence Cloud?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Much as I'm an Atlassian fan-boy, I have to say this change has failed me as well.

There are parts of it I like, many I'm not bothered about, and one that really jumps out as a terrible design.  I normally think in pictures or monospaced orange and black text, 25 by 40, so I don't usually feel qualified to talk about user interfaces a lot.

But I want my side-bar back.  I'm perfectly fine with a show/hide option, and hiding it when in edit, search or admin where it might not be useful.

But any time I am reading a Space, I want a consistent sidebar with space shortcuts and a static, explorable page tree that tells you where you are and doesn't change the context all the time.

[Michael Corvin]

agreed!

...and even the 'aesthetics' are questionable.  I find the 'new' look UI visually unbalanced and clunky.  

I do really wonder where the requirements and design for this came from.  Most of the comments here and in the related threads and issue point out how central to the user experience the pagetree and configurable sidebar is to many customers. 

[Brendan Andrews]

A triumph of aesthetics over function. 

It certainly could improve usability were there different priorities given to what's important. And some missing features returned.

But why (for example) show a Gliffy Diagram or Blog shortcut when I arrive at a space? But not a page tree...? Who do you think your audience is?

[Till Noever]

Well said!

[Michael Corvin]

A notification is being displayed at the top of the pages on our cloud site:

The new Confluence experience is now available for everyone, and we'll be turning it back on for you between August 24–31. Opt back in now or learn more before it lands.

[Robert Quinn]

Haven't read every comment, but whole heartly agree with most of them.

I realize you guys thought your were improving confluence but this latest UX paradigm shift is just a PITA and frankly it doesn't help people that actually use the system.

I'm sure your UX team is very excited and it must demo great but frankly it isn't better.

I switch spaces a lot.  This release makes that harder.

I search a lot.  This release makes that harder.

I use the page tree a lot.  This release makes that harder.

I'm not worried about the bugs in these new feature, I'm worried about your direction.

Besides giving me lots of real estate for content, it doesn't do anything for me.

I don't know what the balance is but my advice is get another project to keep you busy, seems like some people just have too much time on their hands.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Vote for the issue Susan raised - Atlassian don't look here for weighting or complaints.  See CONFCLOUD-56841

[Tina]

Where did you find that the "opt out" functionality will be removed  Aug 24?    Looking for information about how long this functionality will be possible.

[Till Noever]

I wish I could 'evaluate' as well, but the people I work for are committed to it, and we have too much knowledge tranferred to the system to reconsider options. Buyer beware...

[Michael Corvin]

If the UI callback functionality is hardcode dependent on the UI layout then it's a lousy implementation!!

There should be no reason why the menu bar and side bar locations, content, icons, fonts, layout and hide/show defaults should be completely configurable, irrespective of the functionality that they invoke.

It would indeed be interesting to see the 'opt out' statistics.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Same here.  I'm sticking with it because I need to learn, but I wouldn't be surprised to find some high numbers of opt-outs.

[Jonathan Churchman]

I'd be interested to see the statistics on the percentage of users that have opted out of "painful".

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Because "useful" is going away, it's going to be removed from the code, so it can't be permanent.

Hopefully, it won't go anywhere until "painful" has been brought up to scratch.  My opinion is that "painful" needs a lot of work as it feels like it's a design that's passed the automated unit tests but not real user tests.

[Jonathan Churchman]

Certainly not a fan of the new interface. 

If they can manage to run them in parallel for this long, why can't they give the users the permanent choice of using either "old" or "new". Or as I like to call them "useful" and "painful".

[Susan Hauth _Jira Queen_]

Hi,

Please vote for my issue to have a page tree back on the Space page:

CONFCLOUD-56841

Susan

[Michael Corvin]

This caught us off guard too when suddenly the "New Confluence Experience" (WTF are they a Disney ride now??) appeared upon login.

I immediately advised our user base to 'opt out' but as of Aug 24 we are going to be stuck with the clunky, ugly and infuriating "New Confluence Experience".   I've opened a feedback issue but we're probably screwed.   (It's like all the gnashing of teeth when the markup was deprecated - but at least that had technical justification and useful vestiges were left).

At least for our mission sites supporting operational activities are self-hosted so we won't be upgrading those for the next few years.   We have customized sidebars that rely on having the page tree the default view.

The 'New Confluence Experience' claims to clean things up with the contextual menus, but the dynamic behavior confuses users and the new icons, fonts and line spacing is clunky and wastes huge amount of space.

Bottom line: sidebars and menus should be complete configurable by site admin with the 'legacy' and the 'new experience' provided as the out-of-the-box options.

[Susan Hauth _Jira Queen_]

Already did.  But feedback after the fact is never really that effective.

[Thomas Schlegel]

Hi Susan,

you can give feedback directly in the new sidebars:

But I am also fearing the moment, I have to confront 1000s of employees with the new interface... 

[Susan Hauth _Jira Queen_]

Ouch.  I want the page tree back!  This is not going to make my users very happy.  Wonder how we request this?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Ah, it was just the new interface.  Sorry, completely misdiagnosed it!

[Robert Lauriston]

Without the admin menus, I don't have the service agreement number or whatever it's called.

[Robert Lauriston]

I eventually found this:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/confcloud/new-navigation-and-a-new-look-for-confluence-881536766.html

I was thrown off because clicking the Pages icon had no effect the first time (probably Firefox flakiness).

There's still a page tree, it's just buried two or three levels down and can't be displayed in the sidebar.