Adding images from links now supported in Confluence

[#1]

Hi everyone, I'm Kieran one of the Product Managers for the Editor 👋

I'm pleased to share that you can now add images directly from a link, instead of just uploading locally. We heard from many of you that this was a frequently used feature in the legacy editor and now we've brought it to the new Cloud Editor too. 

Adding images from a link

Changes to uploading media

Uploading media is still accessed from the same place, however instead of immediately opening the native file browser, we’ve introduced a tab layout to allow you to decide if you want to upload or reference a link.

Referencing external media

When adding media using links, we’ll try to upload them to avoid any unexpected changes for viewers of your pages. But sometimes that's not possible, so the media will show up as an external image instead.

Rollout timeline

These changes are rolling out to customers now, so if you haven't seen them yet they should be available in your Confluence cloud instance in the coming weeks. 

Please let us know what you think or ask any questions in the comments below - we would ❤️ your feedback.

[Kristian Klima]

Hi @Kieran Gray 

Are there any limitations and/quirks when it comes to permissions on such images/links? 

Both in terms of adding them and their visibility? For example, when syncing pages between spaces (source > target) Some theme apps can't display images from target pages as their permission-bound to the source. Well, I guess I'll test it when it rolls out :) 

(I see the warning in an image but that applies to permissions/access privileges to the linked file, not the link/rendering in Confluence.)

Thanks.

[Jason Pepper]

Why do linked images have to have the "i" displayed ? Can this not be a preference to decide whether that is displayed or not ? Considering that this update stems from a very basic requirement (implementing the <img src=""> mechanism of HTML) which was lost with the new editor it is disappointing that yet again, Atlassian have managed to mess up the most basic of bug fixes !

[boskicthebrain]

Uploading images from links is the polar opposite why we have used these links for. The whole point of linking images was to be able to edit them elsewhere and not to have to update the document afterwards.

At the moment, we are using iframes, but that is also not ideal, because they have worse performance and the browser might not load all of them if the document is long and I have more than two.

This is unfortunate. 

There is still this (very cumbersome) workaround with markup. Why not give us the option to either link or upload the image from the URL?

[Dennis Stengele]

Could you please explain, when an image from a URL is attached to the page and when it is referenced dynamically?

I have just tested it with two different URLs and one in referenced while the other is embedded.

[Alexandre Marcoux]

Why? This is not what is needed... We want (need) to insert link to external image that will change and we need the changing image to be reflected on the Confluence page... It was working before!

[Andy Gladstone]

Finally. I'll be able to insert the GIFs and Memes I need to accentuate my pages without having to copy and paste static images from other websites. 

[Raimo]

@Kieran Gray, is there a way to add image from a link when generating the ADF of a page?

[Joel Arnott]

@RaimoI tried adding an external image to a test page using a fake `localhost` url so that Confluence would fail to save the image (i.e. keep it external). This is the ADF JSON it ended up with:

```

{
  "type": "mediaSingle",
  "attrs": {
    "layout": "center",
    "width": 250,
    "widthType": "pixel"
  },
  "content": [
    {
      "type": "media",
      "attrs": {
        "type": "external",
        "url": "http://localhost/image.png"
      }
    }
  ]
}
```