Coming Soon: Confluence 5

By Terrence Caldwell, Product Marketing Specialist
News, Confluence
On February 20, 2013

Confluence 5 has been released!

Confluence 5 is officially on its way. If you’ve been out of the loop over the last couple of weeks then you might want to catch up on the improvements we’ve already announced. We’ve promised it’s going to be a big release. Bigger than the harlem shake? Think bigger.

We don’t want to ruin the surprise, but we just had to give you a taste of what’s coming. Buckle the seatbelt on your ergonomic chair and crank the volume because…

Confluence 5 is coming…

Kudos the team at AgileBits for the inspiration for this video

Tags: Confluence, confluence 5, release

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Comments (22)

Oh god, I hope it’s Markdown. The RTE is terrible. If some type of markdown is not reintroduced within the next year, we will be moving away from Confluence.

By Mike on February 20, 2013 / Reply
- Hi Mike – we don’t have any plans to bring back wiki markup. On the RTE front, Confluence 5 does bring a number of improvements and over 100 fixes to the RTE since Confluence 4. See this post for more details:
  
  blogs.atlassian.com/2013/01/confluence-5-highlights-3-improvements-to-the-confluence-editor/
  
  By Matt Hodges on February 20, 2013
- Hey Mike,
  
  I feel your frustration! Maybe the “Wiki Plugin for Confluence” (https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/org.swift.confluence.wiki/version/20) by Bob Swift comes in handy for you? I found it to be very useful! And release 1.2 says “Confluence 4.1 – 5.0″ – so I’m hopeful it’ll be around for a while to come, too.
  
  By Michael on February 21, 2013
- Don’t give up hope Atlassian — I’m considering moving our knowledge-base to Confluence and re-vamping efforts at documentation in our IT department exactly BECAUSE of the great RTE functionality in Confluence.
  
  Wiki syntax / Markdown are fine and good for a certain crowd – myself included – but I’ll never get even the most technical people in my organization — not even the other programmer! — to take the time to learn another language syntax just to format text. And the office integration and copy and paste of images is just what the doctor ordered. I know all of that is nearly impossible to get working right when you are trying to keep both a wiki syntax and an visual editor in sync. I watched that exact struggle sink my favorite wiki – ScrewTurn — into closing their doors. And their RTE didn’t have 1/10th the functionality Confluence provides.
  
  So, keep up the good work!
  
  By Noffie on February 21, 2013
- I didn’t realise we were still talking about this?
  
  I’m not afraid of markup (or even markdown), but prior to Confluence 4 the RTE was a barrier to wider adoption and it limited access to its advanced features to users comfortable with markup. Confluence now offers one of the best RTEs on the market in an enterprise collaboration platforms.
  
  I also can’t imagine that new features coming in 5.1 (which I’ve been lucky enough to see a preview of) would have been easy to achieve with the old wiki markup editor. The RTE is one of the best enhancements to come to Confluence.
  
  If you want to work even faster, there are still many shortcuts available for power users in the RTE – see https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Quick+Reference+Guide+for+the+Confluence+Editor#QuickReferenceGuidefortheConfluenceEditor-Usingthemostcommonformatsandfeatures
  
  By James Dellow on February 21, 2013
- Hi Mike,
  
  I would like to understand your use-case for markdown better. Would you mind getting in touch with me at jens at atlassian.com?
  
  By Jens Schumacher on February 21, 2013
- Mike, I completely agree. Though, I don’t care if it’s markdown or bringing textile back, I just want the WYSIWYM editor back.
  
  The thing that seems odd to me is that Atlassian no longer has a wiki product. Confluence was _the_ choice for those wanting a wiki in the enterprise. Rather than allowing two page types (wiki or RTE) since wiki apparently wasn’t powerful enough Confluence went to doc management – a product more like SharePoint.
  
  It seems like a lot of customers kinda got stranded. Their Wiki – commonly an alternative to SharePoint – turned into something they didn’t want. The choice is either use an ever aging version or go on the hunt for another enterprise wiki.
  
  We had used confluence plugins to piece together small but helpful web applications – they mostly don’t work anymore or can’t be edited using the RTE. I’m not going to say we weren’t abusing what a wiki should do but it was working great and very accessible to everyone.
  
  By Michael on February 22, 2013
- I can’t agree more with Mike.
  
  PLZ bring back a way to switch into Markup view. So that we can see why things don’t work as expected and why the RTE reacts in mysterious ways and messes up consistent layout of pages.
  
  I had a problem with magically extra spaces just popping in when i switched into edit mode. Support told and showed that there was a unsuspected -tag in the source code (and could not verify why?). The recommended workaround was to work directly in the XML source code of the web page that is way more complex than having a simple wiki markup language.
  
  Please rethink Atlassian. It’s not all about convenience, I also like control over my WYSIWYMG editor. Since consistency is key in technical documentation.
  
  By Chris on February 22, 2013
- Please *don’t* bring back wiki markup! I was a huge fan of it myself and never used the old RTE. But from Confluence 4.1 onwards I like the editor and never looked back. It also greatly improved adoption in our company. In fact, whenever I use an old Confluence version, it feels a bit clumsy and dated.
  
  Being a wiki does not mean to have wiki markup of some kind. It’s the idea of collaboration that makes a wiki. Wiki markup is only one way to create content. It was necessary because years ago it was not possible to create a RTE with web technologies.
  
  By Stephan on February 23, 2013
- Wowsa!
  
  Truly amazing discussion to me – almost 1 1/2 yrs since Confluence 4.X release (Sept 2011), deprecating wiki-markup as the primary editor, in favor of the current and endlessly improving rich text editor (RTE).
  
  What is amazing to me is NOT that there are still a few hanger-ons that feel endlessly entitled to complain, vs. either move along, or get used to it already.
  
  No, more amazing to me is that – in all that time, I have spoken with 100s (yes, 100s) of new or renewing Atlassian customers in my front-line role supporting Atlassian SW and solutions (for AppFusions) – and I simply *do not hear* these “I need wiki-markup” complaints or pangs anymore. *At all!*
  
  I admit I did hear the complaints for about 3 months post-4.0-release, yet then the joy of Confluence 4.1+ kicked in..BIG time (around Jan 2012!) The Confluence team quickly stepped up to initial bugs and challenges; and they continued to deliver releases to create a great UX in their RTE.
  
  What else do I hear? Well:
  
  * I hear relentless kudos of how Atlassian “really took Confluence up a level” since Sept 2011.
  
  * I hear how excellent the platform has become, and about how happy – really happy – customers are with Confluence as the best Wiki in the industry – UNDISPUTEDLY.
  
  * I hear how “I don’t know wiki-markup” excuses have disappeared, and how customers’ user engagement has doubled or tripled, productivity has increased across the board, and how cultures have evolved, changed, improved SINCE the new RTE.
  
  * I also hear endless appreciations that the upgrade processes have gotten so much easier.
  
  In my opinion, THESE are the reasons that Atlassian deprecated wiki-markup that was meeting the needs “of the few” in lieu of a better platform, “for most”.
  
  Will Confluence RTE continue to improve?
  
  Yes – I am sure of it. The Confluence team does not rest on their laurels in their penchant for excellence (at least I have yet to witness that…)
  
  Atlassian Confluence is growing up – and they needed to leave behind their “training wheels” (i.e., wiki-markup).
  
  I personally am tired of hearing this whining especially when there is:
  
  * In-product “type in markup as you go” features
  * An in-product “insert Wiki-markup” option
  * A very easy to use plugin that supports inputting in wiki-markup (as the first @Michael stated).
  * Shortcuts as @JamesDellow mentioned
  * and a ton more, such as @Noffie’s comments
  
  Is it the same as the old world – no.
  
  Products mature, tech matures, needs mature – either figure out a way to work with the great new RTE or maybe move on. But I think the lingering hanger-ons need to get over it.
  
  There are tons of wikis that have old style markup that you can use; go there if that is your preference (until you miss Confluence, and come back!)
  
  By Ellen Feaheny (@ellenfeaheny) on February 23, 2013
- Mike,
  
  If I had a say in this, I would agree with you. As a long time user, I feel the ‘new’ RTE is just terrible. Things like:Cutting and pasting often doesn’t work, headers become randomly bigger, and stop being headers at all, the formatting of my text is randomly being changed and the UI of the editor is just an inconsistent piece of.. (I mean, why do I always see the table tools to add columns, remove columns, even when I’m not working with tables?). Or why is basic functionality, like increasing or decreasing the font size not available, and I need special macros or css for that.
  
  I used to generate some tables using pipe separators, but why I paste them in now, they still are pipe separated tables. So, some elements, like h3. are replaced automatically when typing, but when copy and pasting, it’s not.
  
  So while I really like the macro editor, the navigation, even the search, etc in confluence, the editor just keeps biting me, a thing I never encountered in 4.x and lower. So please either fix the editor, or bring back the ‘underwater screen’, it would make my life a bit easier.
  
  By Erik Pragt on February 26, 2013
Love Confluence, love the editor – our team would be lost without Confluence – can’t wait for 5!

By Anthony Hunter on February 22, 2013 / Reply
Hi Terrence,

I know, this is a little bit off topic, but I am curious …

Besides the great software, you guys always have those great looking product videos. I’ve been a customer for more than 8 years now and they keep getting better

Do you do them in-house, or do you have a company doing them for you? Is there a specific tool you are using?

Thank you,
Kariem

By Kariem Hussein on February 25, 2013 / Reply
- Hey Kariem,
  
  Glad you like the product videos and find them useful! We do them in-house using an app called Screenflow – (http://www.telestream.net/screenflow/overview.htm) combined with some Keynote graphics.
  
  We also have an in-house motion graphics designer that has produced videos like this one: (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHRkXCwAakg) and have used a third-party production company called Paper Dog (http://paperdogvideo.com/) that has done some our live action videos like CD – (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztrmPrriJFM)
  
  Hope that helps mate.
  
  By Terrence Caldwell on February 25, 2013
- Hi Terrence,
  
  Thank you for that great and fast answer!
  
  I had suspected you have an in-house designer working on that, because you create so many awesome videos. Good to know.
  
  I did not know the CD video – very nice
  
  Bye,
  Kariem
  
  By Kariem Hussein on February 25, 2013
Hi guys,

We’re looking to invest in Confluence but would like to wait if version 5 is due. Any approximate estimate?

Cheers

By Alistair on February 26, 2013 / Reply
- Hi Alistair! We just released Confluence 5 this morning! See:
  
  http://blogs.atlassian.com/2013/02/meet-confluence-5-new-look-feel-and-flow/
  
  By Matt Hodges on February 26, 2013
What has happened to the wiki markup editor in confluence 5 ? That is the one reason I started using confluence in the first place — easy copy/paste to/from confluence from ASCII-based editors, and easy updates, without messing up the formatting…

I had checked a confluence 5 preview video in the past, and I remember there was some hotkey (or menu functionality) somewhere that allowed one to still enter markup through some window. How can it be accessed?

By Jeannot Langlois on February 27, 2013 / Reply
- I did some digging and found this shortcut to be CTRL-SHIFT-D.
  
  It only allows to INSERT/OVERWRITE new markup over a selected area, and doesn’t allow to EDIT existing markup.
  
  Disappointed.
  
  By Jeannot Langlois on February 27, 2013
- Jeannot, we removed the wiki markup editor from Confluence with the release of Confluence 4.0 back in September 2011.
  
  You can learn more about this decision here:
  
  http://blogs.atlassian.com/2011/11/why-we-removed-wiki-markup-editor-in-confluence-4/
  
  I’m glad you found the WIki Plugin as that’s the first place I would have pointed you to if you just cannot live without wiki markup
  
  By Matt Hodges on February 27, 2013
Our confluence admin found out a neat work around for this:

1) Install the Bob Swift “wiki markup without migration” plugin ( https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/org.swift.confluence.wiki ).
2) Type “{wiki-markup} in the WYSIWYG editor.
3) Wiki markup editing becomes possible again.

By Jeannot Langlois on February 27, 2013 / Reply
I really like your blog. You write about very interesting things. Thanks for all your tips and information.

By vps on March 14, 2013 / Reply

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