Updated customization for 3.5.13 including making the final breadcrumb a link again to make it easier to copy either one to a email or other places.

   ## Start customize - always show as link
        ## display the last breadcrumb as text, rather than a link as this is where you are
        ###if ($breadcrumb.target && $velocityCount < $numCrumbs)
	#if ($breadcrumb.target)
            <span><a href="$req.contextPath$breadcrumb.target"#if ($showTooltip) title="$toolTip"#end>$displayTitle</a></span>
        #else
            <span>$displayTitle</span>
        #end   
        </li>
    #end
	
	## add a tiny link at the end
	#if (($breadcrumbHidden == false) && $helper.tinyUrl)
        <a href="$helper.domainName/x/$helper.tinyUrl">
            <img src="/images/icons/permalink_light_16.png" width="16" height="16" hspace="8" vspace="0" align="abstop" border="0" alt="Permanent link to current page." title="Permanent link to current page."/>
        </a> 
	#end	  
    ## end customization
}

I do know and use that, for lack of a better way. And no, I do not like having to remember yet another way of copying the link for each site I work with.

The number one universal gesture to get the url of the current page is to copy it from the address bar. Number two, which is site-specific but works on quite a few, is to find a link that “obviously” leads to the same page (e.g. heading at the top) and possibly a specific anchor (e.g. heading of a section or the date/time stamp of a comment), invoke the context menu on that link, and choose “Copy Link Location”. Both these methods work regardless of whether Javascript is enabled or disabled.

In fact, the only reason for a page to have a link to itself is so that it could be copied to the clipboard. Might as well make it the right link to copy. (Currently, the link that is copied is no better in terms of readability, which would be a valid reason to offer that link by default.)

Resorting to client-side scripting to present text for copying is a necessary workaround when the text to copy is not a url.

yurikhan, did you know you can access a page's tiny link via the Link Dialog? Just press 'K' and then you'll be able to copy the tiny link to your clipboard.

The Share feature doesn’t really solve anything. The primary case when you want to share a link is not “look what I found: <url>”. It’s “Hey, how do I…” — ”<url>”, either in email (where you want to Reply, not send an unrelated message) or in Jabber (where Share doesn’t enter the picture at all). Also, one might (and often does) want to send several links in one message.

Therefore, the tiny link needs to be easily available. (Solvable with a site-wide hack or a userscript though.)

I've seen the new share feature in 3.5 and while it's nice, it still doesn't hit the spot for me.

Could somebody please help a Velocity noob figure out how to add a field to the link pop-up that basically shows this (in copy/paste-able format for sticking in documents, email, etc.)? See my post from 11 Feb 2011 for context.

<link rel="sharinglink" href="http://sandbox.onconfluence.com/x/hYCR" title="[DOCO:Home]">

The share feature is good, but if I want to answer someone's question with a link to a wiki page, I need to paste an intelligible (and permanent) URL.

While I'm wishing out loud, I'd like to have it be the default selection when I use the "link to this page" hot key.

It will be with the release of Confluence 3.5

Confluence 3.5 is scheduled to ship in March, bringing with it a number of new features and improvements. One feature in particular will make it a lot easier to share pages with other users. You'll have to wait until release to see what that is though

I've already blogged about few small improvements and administrator features that will be shipped. See:

• http://blogs.atlassian.com/confluence/2011/01/size-doesnt-matter-small-improvements-35.html
• http://blogs.atlassian.com/confluence/2011/02/5-reasons-administrator-features-confluence-35.html

Yes, I would like to have a single hyperlink I could copy to my clipboard and then paste into an email. The ideal would be for that hyperlink to display [Space:Page Title] (my users recognize that as a wiki link) but have the tinyurl as the HREF.

While I'm wishing out loud, I'd like to have it be the default selection when I use the "link to this page" hot key.

@Hugh – Is the main reason you want quick access to the page's tiny link for sharing a page link with other users?

I've tweaked /breadcrumbs.vm to be pretty close to what I'm looking for (approximately line 34).

#else

1. 1. Use the tiny URL so that this last element can be easily pasted with a friendly title and a permanent URL
      <span><a href="$req.contextPath$helper.tinyUrl"#if ($showTooltip) title="$toolTip"#end>$displayTitle</a></span>
      #end

It would still be nice if the link menu item presented it in this format. I've found link-to-this-page.vm but I don't know enough about the Confluence rendering process to make my change show up. I was hoping to just add something like this:

<link rel="friendlylink" href="${globalSettings.baseUrl}/x/$action.tinyUrl" title="$generalUtil.htmlEncode($page.linkWikiMarkup)">

The menu addition in 3.1 is very helpful. The keyboard shortcut is helpful too but is not very discoverable.

Permalinks are so useful that I still think they deserve to be either:
1) made the displayed address in the address box of every browser (so people's natural inclination of copying/pasting the link will always work – the URL need not be human readable in Confluence as Confluence does a great job of displaying location at the top of the content area) (and have confluence auto-translate these into the correct wiki link if used within the same Confluence wiki) or
2) make the permalink instantly visible and copyable by doing a right click "Copy link location" (Admittedly the "K" keyboard shortcut + ctrl-C for copy is about equivalent to a right click plus 2nd click to copy – but the second approach is more discoverable) (so for this option we may be close enough)