Confluence 3.5 : Confluence 3.5-beta1 ("Beta 1") Release Notes
This page last changed on Mar 03, 2011 by richatkins.
Confluence versions marked "Milestone", "Beta" or "Release Candidate" (RC) are development releases, which are preliminary releases leading up to the official release of a major Confluence version. They are a snapshot of our work in progress and provide an advance preview of new features to our customers and the general public. Confluence plugin developers can also use development releases to test and fix their plugins in advance of an official release. The main distinction between a beta and a milestone release is that milestone releases typically acquire new features with each subsequent milestone version, whereas beta releases are predominantly feature-complete. Beta releases still undergo bug fixing and occasionally, existing features may be enhanced or added in subsequent beta versions. Release candidates are close to being ready for final release, but may still undergo changes before the final release.
For all production use and testing of Confluence, please use the latest official release. Who should try this out?With development releases, the Confluence development team aims to provide plugin developers with an opportunity to see the latest changes in the code. Furthermore, if you are a Confluence customer who is eager to see the new features and provide us with feedback on our upcoming major release, we encourage you to try out our development releases.
Each development release has passed all our automated tests, has undergone some performance testing and has been used for one week on our official internal Confluence server. Furthermore, most of the solved issues have been reviewed. Be aware that our development releases are still undergoing final performance and compatibility testing for databases and application servers. Hence, we recommend that you use development releases on installations with small (as opposed to full production-level) user bases. Upgrade ProcedureIf you wish to upgrade your existing Confluence installation with this version, ensure you have created a separate copy of your current Confluence production installation first and using that copy, follow the normal upgrade instructions to upgrade it to this development release. If you have also implemented customised site- or space-specific layouts, you will need to re-implement them after the upgrade. Otherwise, some of the new features in Confluence (or possibly existing features) may not function correctly. DownloadsAll development releases are available from Development Releases on the Atlassian website. Previous Milestone(s)
New Features and ImprovementsHighlights of this release:
"What's New"When a user first logs in to Confluence 3.5, they'll be presented with an AUI dialog box promoting new product features. (We aim to eventually work this feature into all our products.) The content on this dialog is retrieved from Atlassian's web servers - the following screenshot is a mockup of what the final dialog box might look like. Like other products that encourage you to actually read their release notes before continuing, the What's New dialog will keep Revised Dashboard LayoutPreviously in Confluence, you could filter the "Recently Updated" section on your dashboard by selecting a tab in the spaces list. For example, clicking on the Favourite tab in the spaces list on the left would limit recent updates on the right to your favourite spaces only). This was a source of confusion for many users not expecting a tab change on the bottom left to update the recent updates on the top right. To address the issue, the recent updates section has been given its own set of tabs (which now function independently of the spaces list). In the process, the tabs were also given a face lift and the recent updates section now takes up the entire right hand side of the dashboard. New Insert JIRA Issue dialogIf you have configured one or more application links (aka 'applinks') to a JIRA server, you can insert a JIRA Issue link into your Confluence page while you're editing the page. You can access this feature via a new JIRA button on the editor toolbar. When you click it or press Ctrl + Shift + J, you get:
Improved JIRA issues macroCompletely overhauled to support applinks, the JIRA issues macro now supports a single issue key, multiple comma separated issue keys or a JQL query. We've also changed the macro to use the name "jira" (although "jiraissues" will still work). Finally, the macro now supports OAuth-based authentication from Confluence to JIRA. Note that all new features of the JIRA issues macro require a JIRA application link to be configured. Here are some examples of using the improved JIRA issues macro:
Share a PageHow many times have you copied a page link, pasted it into an email and sent it off to someone with a little note? The new "Share a page" feature makes this common activity super quick.
More Notification ImprovementsOne-click 'stop watch' links
Even more improvements
Space Blog WatchesCONF-6478 is a highly voted for issue, with over 100 votes. The idea is that blog posts are newsworthy updates so you might want to get email notifications for new blog posts without getting emailed for all other activity in the space. Drag-and-Drop ImprovementsPowered by HTML 5 - Drag-and-drop is now powered by HTML5. That means:
Drag-and-drop multimedia files - Confluence 3.5-m4 introduced the Multimedia Macro. In this release we added drag and drop - Dragging a multimedia file onto a page will automatically insert the multimedia macro for you. New {code} macroThe newcode macro project has now been bundled into Confluence, replacing the original code macro in atlassian-renderer. The new code macro has a number of improvements over the original macro (wider syntax support, copy/paste without getting line numbers in the clipboard). Space Directory ImprovementsWe've improved the Space Directory since last milestone. Notable additions since then are:
Scheduled Job AdministrationA new Confluence administration screen to monitor, and manage scheduled jobs. This is available through the "Scheduled Job Administration" link in the Confluence admin console. Here are some screenshots:
ApplinksThe first cut of applinks has been integrated into Confluence. We will use this as the basis for delivering deeper JIRA integration later in this release. Performance / StabilityA cache has been added to store page diffs. This should prevent the situation where RSS feeds with diffs can slow down Confluence. SecurityThe underlying user management code has been updated so that it now enforces permissions on directories at a low level. This means remote API calls that create or modify users or groups on read only directories will fail and no longer write to the directory as they did in previous 3.5 milestones. Other improvements
Small Improvements Gallery
Bugs fixed
User management bug fixes
Drag and drop bug fixes
Other bug fixes
Improvements for developers
Known Issues
Note about CONFDEV issuesThe Confluence team is using an internal JIRA project for tracking development with GreenHopper. The CONFDEV issues refer to our internal tracking numbers for user stories or bugs discovered and fixed within the scope of a release. ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
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Document generated by Confluence on Mar 16, 2011 18:45 |