why is Confluence buggy?
Asked by Jamie Band:

I'm a fan of Atlassian software. Unlike JIRA, Bamboo and Fish Eye, Confluence seems so incredibly buggy. Is quality assurance part of the production process?


Answers:
author: Philipp G?llner (Scandio)
body: @Jamie Band have you thought about asking a expert to help? We have many confluence instances with more than 50000 users and all work fine for us. Even with wild browser configurations. Did you make sure that your browser is in the supported plattform: <https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Supported+Platforms>

And if yes has the right configuration paramerters: <https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRAKB/Browser+Troubleshooting+Guide>

Do you have tried using a free trail of [https://www.atlassian.com/ondemand/signup/?product=confluence.ondemand\&unitCount=10](https://www.atlassian.com/ondemand/signup/?product=confluence.ondemand&unitCount=10) to verify if it is a problem with your installation?


author: Jamie Band
body: Specifically, when I create anchors via the GUI, confluence is removing some text from the anchor. The result is an anchor that doesn't work. To resolve, I have to enter macro text.

comments: author: Daniel Wester
body: Which version of Confluence? Browser version? What part of the text is being removed?


author: Andrew Lighten
body: I get exactly the same issue. Confluence 5.5.3 hosted. Chrome or Firefox or Safari --- doesn't seem to matter. The anchor text is truncated.


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: That's something in your browser/network setup, not Confluence.


author: MailArchiva Stimulus
body: Yeah, the workaround is to type very slowly. If you type fast, Confluence misses some characters.

comments: author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: That's something in your browser/network setup, not Confluence.


author: MailArchiva Stimulus
body: Sorry, I can't agree with you. It happens on any browser, and typically when Confluence is hosted remotely over the Internet. Is there is a custom routine that tries to capture/manipulate characters when entering anchor text? I believe that this routine is causing characters to be skipped when there is a small amount of latency on network.


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: Some, yes, but it's not that that is the problem, it's your system - I've seen it do that, when I've got dodgy plugins in my browser.


author: MailArchiva Stimulus
body: Nic... its not browser plugins. Its a Confluence issue.


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: This is where the debugging kicks in. I can't replicate this. There's hardly any one else reporting it (i.e. this thread, nothing else). So you can't just blame Confluence without evidence. You need to trace the error. Try a Confluence that other people are not having issues with - if the problem goes away, it's the Confluence you are connecting to (and that's probably going to be a server side problem, not Confluence). If the problem persists, it's your side. Try using debugging tools to find out where the issue is in the page being rendered - it could be a single line of javascript overdoing it, and that could be from a plugin. Try a local copy of confluence on your machine - if there's no problem there, it's definitely your network. Check the versions of Confluence, browser and Java (on the server) in use. Do you have addons installed in the Confluence?A blanket assertion that the problem is Confluence is wrong. It's working for other people, so it's either your Confluence setup, your network or something on your machine.


author: Andrew Lighten
body: I've had it occur on three separate instances of Confluence --- all hosted by Atlassian.


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: Probably the network then, rather than Confluence. I've had mostly decent experiences with Atlassian Cloud, but the fact is for some people, it is unutterably slow and painful to use. I've never got a decent answer as to why this is the case (other than latency as the servers are in the US)


author: Andrew Lighten
body: I've had it occur on a variety of networks --- but all from Australia. If there's an issue between here and there it may well be the network --- but I can tell you that I don't encounter dropped characters from any other web application I use. It's only ever Confluence anchors.


author: Charles Ritchea
body: I agree, I must edit with Confluence regularly, I always use the latest versions of Firefox, Chrome, and IE. Since the browsers are constantly changing, but our Confluence install remains static, the QA process doesn't really come into it. It's frustrating because I'm running into so many odd behavior that I don't have time to file a bug report. Built-in features like lists are very unpredictable when copy/pasting. There is no cursor/caret in Firefox and the bug is marked low priority. Page breaks in PDF Export are bizarre if code blocks are used. Cursor jumps around all over the place. Every browser has something wrong with it. It's not like Chrome is perfect; although, so far it's been the most usable.


author: Jamie Band
body: the anchors text is being cut in half. like headingone. The anchor may be saved as heading


author: Jamie Band
body: Linux 3.2.0-43-generic #68-Ubuntu SMP Wed May 15 03:33:33 UTC 2013 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux Confluence 5.4.2.  


author: Jamie Band
body: Its likely an unfair question since I do not state what exactly is buggy. I started using Confluence a few days ago. Sometimes when I save pages, changes are not applied. When I create links to anchors they frequently do not save correctly. Perhaps, its something in my environment, but I found it difficult to get on with content creation.

comments: author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: Does sound like something in your environment. Maybe if you could give exact conditions when it happens, we could help you pin it down. (For example, I regularly get save-page failures, when I'm on a train, but it's fine in the office/home)