Version 5.x release notes

On this page we highlight the following releases:

Visit the Version 5.x.x page for a full history of version 5 releases.

Did you find a bug, or do you have ideas for improvements and new features? Contact us!

Version 5.1

16 November 2016

With the latest release of RefinedTheme for Confluence we're making your Atlassian experience even better. The release ships with great new theming features, a full ThemeShare integration, and bugfixes. 

Support for Confluence 6.0

Now you can enjoy concurrent editing and more Confluence 6.0 features with RefinedTheme as well. 

ThemeShare integration

themes.refinedwiki.com has been fully integrated in the RefinedTheme add-on. Now you can browse and install new themes with just a click of a button. It's never been easier to get up and running with a theme in RefinedTheme. 

The Theme Editor just became even more powerful

Position images in Theme Editor

When uploading images to the Theme Editor, you can now also position them to make sure the relevant area of the image is visible to all screen sizes. 

To make the image work for all window sizes, restrictions are placed on the image width and height.

New navigation menu option

We introduce the "Underlined" navigation menu option. Similar to the other options, the Underline can be configured for colour selection and hover. It also comes with a slick little animation when hovering. Try it out! 

Centered logo and navigation menu

When using the "2 rows" option in the Theme Editor > Header section, you now have the choice to center the header (logo and navigation menu)

Underlying background colour for transparent images

You can now upload images with transparent backgrounds and set an underlying colour in the theme editor. Perfect for creating slight variations of the same theme to give different categories a slightly different look.

..And more Theme Editor candy

Key navigation highlight color

To everyones delight, it is now possible to change the key navigation highlight colour directly in the Theme Editor. This allows instances using several themes to match different key navigation colours to the respective theme.

New UI

The UI has been revamped to include different tabs for the Theme and its version history, as well as a changed context menu. The reason for this change is make it easier to work with. 

Create and manage Blog Themes

All of the great new Theme Editor features are also available when creating blog themes. 

It is now possible to create several Blog themes for the Blog Portal. A Confluence admin can create global blog themes and manage all global and blog space themes from the Themes tab in the admin UI. 

Create Blog themes as space admin

When creating a new Blog using the Blog Space blueprint, a space admin can create a Blog Theme linked to that blog space. This theme is only usable on that blog and will not be listed for other space admins creating other blogs. The space admin can also delete the theme created for this space, but no global themes.

Create Blog themes globally

To create a global blog theme, an Confluence administrator does this under the Themes tab in the RefinedTheme admin UI. Several global blog themes can be created and choosen from when selecting themes for the Blog portal or for individual blog spaces. 

Get inspired

Get inspired by browsing and downloading other blog themes using our ThemeShare integration. 

Manage and view all blogs in one place

The "Blog" tab previously available in the RefinedTheme admin UI has been moved to the Blog Portal section within the Organizer. 

From here you'll now be able to manage all Blogs on the instance - moving them to and from the Blog Portal as well as setting the theme for the portal. 

Responsive global search

The global search bar has been made responsive. This is in order to give the navigation menu focus on smaller windows and allow for more categories to be shown without scrolling. Highlighting the search bar will expand it and it still works as before. 

New REST API version

The RefinedTheme Rest API has been updated from 1.0 to version 2.0.

Version 1.0

/rest/originaltheme/1.0/

 Version 2.0

/rest/refinedtheme/2.0/

or

/rest/refinedtheme/latest/

The old API is still deprecated and could be removed in a future version. It's still available under the previous URL however. Where applicable, this will trigger on the new API where no changes has been made. 

..And loads more

• Preparing add-on for Confluence 6.0.0

• Changed spacekey parameter in Users In Space macro to a searchable input field for spaces.

• Fixed a bug where space admins weren't able to change category for their space even if this was enabled through Theme Configuration.

• Follow-button no longer shown for anonymous users in the User Network macro.

• Fixed a bug where the organizer would render categories on top of each other when canceling a drag'n'drop.

• You can no longer add non-existing topics to Questions columns in the footer. 

• Added upload button and improved the look and feel of upload forms in theme lists in the admin UI.

• Changes in the Space Admin > Blog settings section now uses a save button to save changes.

• Active themes under the themes tab now lists where the theme is active.

• The context menu has been changed to a dropdown view in the theme editor.

• It's now possible to change the name of themes directly in the themes listing.

• A warning is now shown if an admin tries to edit global dashboards when RefinedTheme isn't used globally.

• Clicking a theme card now previews the theme.

• The Organizer now shows if a space is archived or not.

• Fixed a bug where the share dialog was wrongly positioned when used in combination with the 'Concealed menu layout'

Version 5.0

9 March 2016

We're very proud to announce the latest release of RefinedTheme for Confluence. With over 400 internal tickets solved, and loads of public features and feedback implemented, RefinedTheme version 5.0.0 is the biggest RefinedTheme release yet!

Brand new, powerful theme editor

With 5.0 we've gone above and beyond to create the ultimate theming experience! Using the brand new and very powerful theme editor anyone can create great looking themes in no time. The editor contains a large live preview area allowing you to freely experiment and directly see the effect of your changes. And these changes are super easy to make; with a few clicks, selecting your choice of options, added treatments and effects, you can go from a pure Confluence look to a truly unique theme.

Editing the theme in different contexts like when on a dashboard, viewing a space or while showing a popup, will automatically show a preview in that state so that you always see how your changes will affect the output. The theme editor is packed with features like highlighting options, right clicking the preview to edit that section, using custom images, version control, fullscreen preview, thumbnail generation and more.

With the new theme editor there's over 13 billion different theme combinations - and that's not including the several million colors each of these themes can use. But don't trust us on the combinatorics, try it out today and do the math yourself! 

The theme editor can be used to create themes used globally, on a specific category, or on blogs shown in the blog portal.

Are you running a custom design? Please take a look at the information about Upgrade to 5.0 to make sure your upgrade will work as expected!

Introducing category modules

To further improve on the great organizing capability of categories, we're introducing Category modules. In version 5.0 we're including 4 category modules:

When creating categories you can now specify what kind of module that category should be. An inline news feed for the Dev Team Category? A Twitter feed widget in the About/Company category? Or maybe recently asked questions in the Support category? The category modules opens up for loads of new interesting ways of accessing, organizing and presenting content in your confluence instance.

Custom space templates and layouts

Since Version 4.0 of RefinedTheme it's been possible to edit the space layout using the Space layout editor. Before there were two bundled templates: Documentation and Public. From version 5.0 you can create custom space layouts. This allows for a coherent UI experience where your users can select what layout to apply on their newly created spaces. Define a 'Product Space Layout' once and select it every time a new Product space is created to ensure all Product spaces have the same layout and UI. Need to add a new macro or edit some layout setting? Edit the template and all spaces will be updated! 

Completely new UI

We've done a complete overhaul on the UI of RefinedTheme for Confluence. Your existing designs will automatically be upgraded to new modern themes. Old image icons have been discarded to make room for sharp icon fonts. We've also reworked the admin UI and the space and page view UI.

Page UI

To provide the best possible user experience the space and page view layout has been greatly improved. The page and space menus have been separated making the context clearer. By presenting the page menus as a default on Confluence pages, we ensure compatibility with most third-party vendors who want to add functionality to pages. 

Admin UI

We're also showing the admins some UX-love with our new Admin UI. The overview tab menu has been simplified and divided into the RefinedTheme core feature areas:

• Organizer

• Themes

• Navigation

• Templates & Layouts

• Blogs

• Cache 

These contain components that the administrator can configure individually. Many of the previous settings from the main Theme Configuration landing page have moved to their corresponding areas such as the Theme Editor or the space layout. Some examples are:

• Global menu layout has moved to the Theme Editor

• Display space logo has moved to the space layout editor. Now you can determine whether or not to show space logos globally or on a per-space basis.

• Popup dialog design has moved to the Theme editor

Login page UI

From this version we're separating the landing dashboard and the login screen some. As with the page UI we're presenting the default Confluence login screen wrapped in the currently active theme. This means that the category navigation won't be available from the login screen. It will however, still be available from the main dashboard/landing page, which is available for anonymous users if your instance has those permissions set up. 

New streamlined blog experience 

Open

Open

We've reworked the blogging system and in 5.0 we're introducing a Blog space blueprint. A blog will only show information relevant to it such as blog settings and its blog posts. The blogs can be placed in either your standard RefinedTheme/Confluence interface or in the Blog Portal. The regular Confluence interface contains all your categories and category modules, so placing your blog here will allow you to organize it like any other space. The Blog portal is a blogging interface separated from your main interface. Placing your blog here will display it in a list of blogs in the Blog Portal along with recent blog posts, separated from the structure and navigation of the regular interface. Blogs in the blog portal can be themed separately. 

Fullscreen feature

Loads of information on a page? Hard to get a good overview of the permissions settings? Press 'f' or the fullscreen button on any page to enter fullscreen mode to view the rendered content in fullscreen. If you navigate when in fullscreen the new page will be loaded in fullscreen as well.

A new way of creating Advanced Themes

The previously named Customs designs are now known as Advanced themes. If the new powerful Theme editor doesn't cut it, our partners and more experienced users can use the Advanced Theme Editor to create their own Advance Themes using javascript and css. These themes can also be developed using your favourite development environment or editor and then uploaded using a bundled script.

User-based layout on global sidebar menu

Different users have different preferences and browser window sizes. From 5.0 each user can decide on their own what layout they want to have on the global sidebar menu. They can chose from dynamic, always open or always closed.

User details macro Skype-integration discontinued

In 5.0 the Skype-integration that displayed Skype user status in the user details macro has been discontinued.

Additional features

• Added caching for user categories

• Added caching for users and user details macros

• Added pagination to users and user categories macros

• Ability to add tooltips to categories

• Implemented support for custom urls on subcategories

• Added Questions module as footer column

• Implemented support for @spacename, @categoryname and @spacekey and similar placeholder in dashboard editor and space layout editor. See Text Variables for more info.

Changed supported versions

RefinedTheme version 5.0.0 is supported for Confluence server versions 5.6 - 5.9.6. See the Confluence documentation on supported platforms for your Confluence version for information on supported browser and more.