Confluence : Release Notes 1.5-DR2
This page last changed on Jun 29, 2006 by david.soul@atlassian.com.
Confluence 1.5-DR2 is the first public development release leading up to Confluence 1.5. (Confluence 1.5-DR1 was an internal release only). Developer releases are a snapshot of our work in progress, allowing our customers to see what we're up to, and provide feedback Who should upgrade?Development releases are snapshots of the ongoing Confluence development process. We make them available for customers who are willing to risk an unpolished release in order to have early access to new features. Developer releases are not suitable for running on production systems. If you want to be running the most stable and most reliable version of Confluence, you should stick with the official, numbered releases.
Upgrade ProcedureUpgrading Confluence should be pretty easy. If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.4 or higher, you can find instructions here. We strongly recommend that you backup your confluence.home directory and database before upgrading! If you are upgrading from Confluence 1.3.x or earlier, be sure to read the upgrade instructions in the Confluence 1.4 release notes. DownloadsAll development releases are available from Development Releases on the Atlassian website. New Features in Confluence 1.5-DR2We've been pretty busy, but the four major new features you can find in 1.5-DR2 are:
Consult JIRA for the full list of issues resolved for 1.5-DR2. 1.5-DR2 also incorporates all the bug-fixes that were made between TestTest. WYSIWYG Editing
The WYSIWYG editor allows for Confluence pages to be edited directly through an editing GUI embedded in the web browser, without having to remember Confluence's wiki markup. It almost goes without saying that this has been our number one most requested features, and we're glad we can finally offer it! Global administrators can enable WYSIWYG editing in the General Configuration screen of the site's preferences. They can also choose whether users are presented with the WYSIWYG editor by default, or whether users default to the old wiki markup text-field. If WYSIWYG markup is enabled, but an individual user does not like the default set by the administrator, they are free to override it via a "make this my default" link that will appear on whichever editor is currently not your default. For the "feature mad" amongst us, here are some neat things you can do with the WYSIWYG editor:
Labels for contentAnother highly requested feature was the ability to categorise content within Confluence beyond the rigid heirarchy allowed by spaces and parent-child relationships between pages. To this end we have introduced labels. Labels are simple one-word 'tags' that can be added to any page or blog-post the user has permission to edit. Labels can be used to categorise content, bookmark it, flag it for attention, or anything else you can think of.
Labels can be added to any page from the edit screen, as a space-separated list of words. If you are browsing the site with a modern, Javascript-enabled browser, you'll also be able to use the dynamic web UI to add labels while viewing the page through an interactive interface. Once a page is labeled, then clicking on the label's name allows you to browse other pages with the same label, or view related labels that commonly occur on the same pages. You can also view the space's most popular labels from the space browser, to get an idea of the most popular topics within the space. Many other Confluence features interact with labels: they can be searched for through the search interface, the new RSS builder can filter pages by their label, and we're looking forward to building label support into Confluence's packaged macros, and even the dashboard. Personal Labels If you prepend my: to a label (for example, my:todo or my:favourite, then the label is a personal label – only visible to you. Personal labels allow you to tag content for your own purposes. You can browse your personal labels from your user profile. Any user can add their personal labels to any page, even when they don't have editing permission.
Favourites Favourites are a special personal label: my:favourite or my:favorite. Whenever you see the Cannot resolve external resource into attachment. icon, it means you can label this content as being your favourite, and whenever you see the Cannot resolve external resource into attachment. icon, it means that the content is currently in your list of favourites. You can view your favourites from the Labels tab of your user profile, but they come in handy for... Labels and the Dashboard Labels can be used on the Dashboard to create different views of the Confluence site. The list of spaces now offers the following tabs:
A "team" is a group of spaces that share a common team label. Spaces can be labeled from the Advanced tab of Browse Space. ![]()
The Recent Changes list on the dashboard will show only content that has been changed in the spaces that are currently listed in the space view. So if you are currently viewing the 'My' tab, only updates in your favourite spaces will be shown on the dashboard. If you are logged in, Confluence will remember your most recently selected tab and team on the dashboard. Dynamic RSS BuilderA third highly-requested feature. Confluence has always provided a brace of useful RSS feeds, but the problem is that for every feed we provided, users wanted half a dozen more. The obvious answer is to let users build RSS feeds based on their own chosen criteria. You can access the RSS builder from the Confluence dashboard Once in the builder, you can choose
Once you have decided what you want, Confluence will give you a URL to paste into your RSS reader. These URLs can be shared with other Confluence users, although they will only ever be allowed to see content that they have permission to view. If you have asked to authenticate, Confluence will require HTTP Basic Authentication, which is supported by most RSS readers. We've also taken the opportunity to improve the presentation of our RSS feeds - including a lot more information in each feed so you can follow your Confluence site entirely from your newsreader.
Change summariesIn a very late addition (added during our recent Fedex Day 2), Confluence now has change summaries. These allow you to add a comment to each edit that will appear in change histories, allowing you to keep a more complete record of how and why a particular page has been modified. There is also a {change-history} macro to enable you to display a page's history within its body if you so desire. Other Things to Check OutEmbed Flash and Movies You can now embed Flash content or movies (Quicktime or Windows Media) into a page as easily as you can an image: just attach the Flash or movie file to the page, then include it as you would include an image (!filename.mov!). Export Pages as Word Documents You can now export pages straight into Word from the Info tab. This is extremely useful for emailing around content to non-Confluence users, printing a document or just creating a backup in Word. Improved Search Interface Results returned from Confluence's search engine now have:
The gallery macro has been spruced up, and now has a slideshow view:
Also:
Known BugsConfluence 1.5-DR2 is a preview, not a full Confluence release, and as such there are a number of known bugs included in the release (at no extra cost!). Important bugs include:
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Document generated by Confluence on May 01, 2007 19:28 |