A few days ago I got my hands on a copy of Confluence 3.5. Atlassian are billing this as their “biggest release ever”, and a casual glance at the release notes suggests that this is true.

There’s a whole host of real improvements bundled with this release.

Here’s a rundown of some of the stand out new features…

• The ability to quickly create and link a JIRA issue from within a Confluence page
• Improved AD & LDAP connections — including nested LDAP groups (yes)
• HTML5 drap & drop — no more using Google Gears
• Simpler ways to watch & share pages and blog post
• A smarter slicker dashboard
• Spaces now live in categories in the new Spaces Directory

Perhaps my favourite new feature of all has been completely overlooked by most people — thumbnail images can now handle transparencies. This is a “small improvement” that allows me to sleep a little easier. Yes. Really.

And here’s the video tour:

Further reading

• Confluence 3.5 Released: Our Biggest Release Ever