As a vendor, we have a number of dynamic content macro add-ons in the Marketplace, for both Confluence Server and Confluence Cloud.
For Server customers, when viewing in Confluence Mobile web (in mobile Safari on iOS, or Chrome on Android); our macros display a placeholder with “View desktop version”.
This is entirely expected, as we have not included the <device-type>mobile</device-type> tag in our atlassian-plugin.xml descriptors.
Server customers viewing in Confluence Mobile web are able to easily switch to the desktop version of the page (by tapping the placeholder) to view the rendered macro; then switch back again to the mobile version of the page using the link at the top of the page.
For Cloud customers however, the iOS/Android apps are the recommended way of viewing Confluence content on mobile devices. In these apps, instead of a “View desktop version” placeholder, our macros show as a red alert box with the text “Broken macro”.
The documentation for the mobile app states:
Some page macros won’t display in the app or mobile web. You’ll need to view the page in your browser (or switch to full desktop mode on your device).
Is there anything we can do in our atlassian-connect.json descriptor files to prevent the ‘Broken macro’ message from appearing (and preferably show a link to open the page in a browser)?
If not, then the message ‘Broken macro’ is somewhat disingenuous to add-on vendors; as there is nothing the vendor can do. The macro isn’t ‘broken’, the limitation is in the app itself.
Customers who see the message ‘Broken macro’ will naturally assume that the add-on itself is broken.