Guy's Blog Blog from Jan 17, 2008

Just as plugin developers are catching up with Confluence 2.7, Confluence 2.8 throws another set of tasks our way...

Confluence 2.7 introduced some changes to system administrator permissions that caused some pain for any plugins that make extensive use of permission checking. Most plugins in the repository, however, have now caught up with the changes but there may still be a few that haven't.

In Confluence 2.8, there's another change - this time to the Velocity templating engine that's extensively used by virtually every plugin out there that has any form of user interface.

Atlassian are moving up to Velocity 1.5 which is stricter in a number of areas - typos that would be ignored or accommodated in earlier versions will need fixing.

For avoidance of doubt, this move is a good thing! Velocity 1.5 has better error checking (it doesn't swallow exceptions by default) making it easier to detect and fix errors that were previously going unnoticed.

Atlassian have done a sterling job of getting documentation out about the updated well in advance of the public release of Confluence 2.8. For more information, check out Migrating to Velocity 1.5 on Atlassian's wiki.

At Adaptavist the race is now on to release Theme Builder 3.0 before Confluence 2.8 lands. We need to get a 3.x version released that's compatible with Confluence 2.5.x-2.7.x (and then a possible bugfix release should our 24 beta releases have missed anything).

Due to the changes coming in Confluence 2.8, it's possible that a version of Builder for 2.8 won't work on earlier versions of Confluence.

There are other changes planned for Confluence 2.8 that are noteworthy:

• Java 1.4 support will likely end - if it does, this will be a dream for developers as Java 1.4 and associated application servers are really starting to show their age.

• More of the UI is being styled using CSS. Atlassian started the process of kicking the UI in to shape in Confluence 2.6 and there is another big drive on this in Confluence 2.8 from what I hear. It's great news for Theme Builder as it's going to make it possible to customise Confluence more than ever before

• Tangosol (the clustering stuff) is being upgraded to fix a memory leak. As a company that provides hosting to lots of customers, Adaptavist love it when memory leaks are fixed.

• Space keys with hypens bug fixed (this was one I reported) - sweet!

For the full list, see the 2.8 roadmap.

Anyway, that's all for now. Been a really long day wading through accounts, checking over our 2008 legal documents (NDAs, EULAs, etc.) and setting up yet more community spaces on our site including a new Host Service space and revamping our Partner Network Extranet with much needed tools like forums and improved navigation.

A new study has shown that jQuery is the fastest loading mainstream JavaScript library...

Check out the stats

I'm not sure if their packed tests were using /packer/ but would assume they are. As I've said before, packed JavaScript files are only there as a last resort if you can't gzip things (in which case the reduction in download time generally outweighs the time it takes to unpack). Otherwise you should stick to minified + gzip for best results.

Just some random photos of life at Adaptavist...

Atlassian, Adaptavist, netoCiety, Thales
Thales Confluence User Group

GeekUp Christmas Dinner
Velvet, Manchester

Huw Evans
Hosting Services

Alain Moran and his better half, Jo
Theme Builder, Community Bubbles

Dan Hardiker
Bespoke Solutions, Confluence Support

Brussel Sprout
The wife is banned from eating these

Server Work
Greenhays, 28 December 2007

What happens when you mix Java Developers, BeJUG, Atlassian, Google, a woman in sexy boots, mechanised carpet cleaners, and Belgian Beer with Adaptavist...?

I'm not even going to try captioning these pics...

BOF Carpet Cleaner	Belgian beer	Atlassian + Light sabre
Alain and Stephan	Atlassian + Google + Free Beer	Dan + Ladder
Dan + Beer + Light sabre	Cleaning up after the conference	Cheers!
Kinky Boots (she makes it on to my Future Wives wishlist)	Packed exhibition hall	Drinking the hotel bar dry (seriously! they ran out of beer!)
The night draws on	I Like to Watch... Light sabres	Empty exhibition hall
Say "Cheese!"	Ooooh, shiny	More drinking
Big screen lecture	A JavaPolis lecture audience	Waaah!
I was vewy, vewy dwunk	Unconference	The gurus