Confluence has a really powerful editor that allows you to create rich and engaging content. But before we go into creating content, we have to know a bit more about the editor and its options.
Let's go through the editor screen first, from top to bottom:
|
Item |
Description |
|---|---|
|
Confluence Navigation |
The main Confluence navigation bar. |
|
Page title |
The title of the page; this is used in the URL and other links to the page. A page title is mandatory and should be unique within a space. |
|
Editor toolbar |
All the features to format your content, create tables and lists, change alignment, and add other content to the page. More about the editor toolbar in the next section. |
|
Page content |
Your content; words, images, and other media. |
|
Restrictions |
Control who can view or edit your page. |
|
Attachments |
View, manage, and insert attachments to your page. |
|
Labels |
Categorize your page by adding labels. |
|
Location |
Change the location of the page. |
|
Change comment |
Describe your changes to the page; only available when editing an existing page. |
|
Notify watchers |
Select this option to notify watchers of your changes to the page; deselect if the change was only minor. This is only available when editing an existing page. |
|
Preview |
See how your changes affect the page, without saving it first. |
|
Save |
Save your changes. |
|
Cancel |
Stop editing the page and reset all changes you've made. |
During your edit session, Confluence will automatically save drafts of your page as you make your changes. If another user starts editing the same page, Confluence will notify the user, and if possible, will try to merge the changes.
If you are used to creating content online, or even in your office suite on your machine, most of the options on this toolbar should look familiar.
The toolbar can be used to (from left to right):
- Change paragraph and character formatting (such as headings, bold, italics)
- Color text, to emphasize or distinguish texts from each other
- Create bulleted, numbered, or task lists
- Select the indentation and alignment for text or images
- Insert links to other pages, attachments, and external websites
- Add tables, and add, remove, or merge rows and columns
- Insert other content into the page, such as images, videos, or symbols
- Add a layout to your page
- Search and replace content within the page you are editing
Before Confluence Version 4, there was a concept called wiki markup, which was used to format the pages within Confluence. If you wanted to format your content or add a table, you had to be familiar with wiki markup. In the current editor, wiki markup isn't required anymore.
The current editor does allow wiki markup to be used for quick editing; wiki markup will automatically convert the pages to the associated format. With autocomplete and formatting, you can create and edit content faster, and all from your keyboard.
With autoformatting, it's possible to type wiki markup directly into the editor. Some commonly used examples are listed in the following table. If you want to learn more, click on ? on the editor toolbar and select the Editor Autoformatting tab.
|
Wiki Markup |
Result |
|---|---|
|
*bold* |
Bold |
|
_italic_ |
Italic |
|
h1. Heading |
Heading 1 |
|
h2. Heading |
Heading 2 |
|
- item 1 - item 2 |
Bullet list |
|
| cell 1 | cell 2 | |
a two-column table |
When editing in Confluence there are some "shortcut" characters that allow you to quickly add or attach images, files, macros, links, or user-mentions in the page.
|
Trigger character |
Action |
Description |
|---|---|---|
|
[ |
Add a link |
Shows a list of suggested (recently used) pages to link to |
|
! |
Display an image, video, audio file, or document |
Shows a list with media attached to your page to embed in your page |
|
{ |
Add a macro |
Shows a list of macros as soon as you begin typing the macro name |
|
@ |
Notify another user by mentioning them on your page |
Shows a list of users to mention; type a username to get suggestions |
Autocomplete can be canceled by pressing the Esc key on your keyboard, or by clicking somewhere else in the editor panel.
To autocomplete a link, perform the following steps:
- Edit a page and click where you want to insert a link.
- Type
[and the first few characters of the page title and user's name of the file you want to link to. - Select the relevant link from the suggestions' list.
If the item you want to link to is not in the list, you can either:
- Choose Search for 'over' to continue looking for the page.
- Choose Insert Web Link to insert a link to an external page using the link browser.
- Choose Insert Link to Create Page to create a link to a yet-to-be-created page. The page will be created when the link is clicked for the first time.
When you paste a URL into Confluence, the editor will check what you are pasting, and will automatically convert it to something to display in Confluence.
Confluence can recognize links from the services listed here, and the list is growing with every release:
- YouTube and Vimeo videos
- Single JIRA issues or complete JQL queries
- Google Maps
- Other Confluence URLs for pages and blog posts
If you want to add files from your desktop to Confluence, it is possible to do so by dragging files from your desktop onto your browser. Depending on the Confluence view you are using, you will get different results:
- If you are viewing a page, the files are attached
- If you are browsing attachments, the files are attached
- If you are editing a page, the files are attached and embedded at the cursor position
Drag-and-drop requires a browser with the HTML5 drag-and-drop feature implemented. Most recent browsers meet this requirement. Older browser versions, such as Firefox 3.5, Safari 4, and Internet Explorer 8 and 9, only offer limited HTML5 support, and don't support drag-and-drop.