Is Confluence 6.5 for real?

[jesse_butryn]

Is there a way to make confluence 6.5 resemble previous versions (I'm not sure exactly when everything was changed, but 4.3.7 was damn near flawless...there was no reason to change that site layout)?  Maybe I'm the only one but I do not see this as an improvement at all but quite the opposite. 

Most notably the sidebar.   What is that?  I feel like I'm looking at some sort of developer mode and that users should not be seeing this view.   The goal is to make things easier to read/access, not obscure them behind pointless hyperlinks and collapsable lists. 

The top bar isn't much better either though...what's up with the "Spaces" button?  Is there a point to adding spaces as a favorite?  Because that doesn't appear to actually change anything...

Thanks,
Jesse_b

[Brian Houston]

I agree.  Please walk back the design decisions made for this release.

[Jeff Hayton]

I also agree.  I dislike this particular design change and would like it changed back or an option provided to change it back.

[Nynke Zwart]

I also agree. Users are very confused, and even I, as admin, am lost sometimes in how that sidebar reacts.

[roam_scott]

It's honestly really bad and I can't believe there isn't more discussion about it. I'm afraid users are just leaving...

[Bill Bailey]

Well just read the comments when the Cloud switched to this UI:  What just happened to Confluence Cloud?

We are still on 5.10.x, and planning to upgrade in the next few months. Good to know how far into 6.x to jump.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

That thread is well worth a read for anyone thinking of using Cloud.  And anyone planning to be using Atlassian long-term.

The new UI will eventually make its way to server as well, and, unless Atlassian start to do something useful about the problems reported there, we'll all get lumped with a functionally useless interface eventually.

Something has gone wrong with Atlassian's UI designs.  I'm not qualified to say where the problem is, so I'll stick to the clear evidence.  The new Cloud layout is a failure.  It definitely has good intentions, it could well be fixable, but currently, it does not work for most people.

I'm an Atlassian fan-boy with many years experience.  When I'm confronted with a Confluence with no page tree and an Jira where I can't find anything after clicking every damn thing on the screen until I hit "turn off useless new experience", of course I'm going to yell "failure".  It doesn't work.

Anyway, rant over, go visit the "What just happened" thread, it's a lot more informative than my ramblings.

[Gezim Shehu [Communardo]]

Good point.

I also tried out the new cloud UI for JIRA and Confluence.

At first I though maybe it was a one off thing, when you were just used to an old "way" of doing things and have difficulties embracing changes at first.

Well I tried it near a whole week and couldn't get around it. (joke's on me as I'm an admin lol - hard to imagine what the users have to say).

Generally speaking, I think in any application UI designs should be fluid.

If you change the UI, it has to be learnable in the first use. User should be able to find everything right away, hence called an improvement.

I'm sure Atlassian will hear though :)

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I did think it might well be just me who has got used to the old style we've had for years.  But I've had three people new to Confluence use Cloud and turn round and say "it's unusable, you mentioned other non-Cloud options?"

[roam_scott]

Sadly, we have switched to Office 365.  The new UI is one of the primary reasons.