Category: News

We’re Hiring!

1 minute read time · Updated June 6, 2017 · First published March 4, 2013

Current Job Opportunities

Since its first commercial release in early 2006, MIDAS has grown to become a world class web-based scheduling solution. Today, our global clients include Schools, Colleges, Universities, Churches, Leisure and Entertainment Venues, Community Centres, Training Centres, Sports Complexes, and Local Government establishments.

From time to time exciting opportunities arise to be part of MIDAS, and we’re now recruiting for an experienced and highly motivated Digital Sales and Marketing Specialist to join us!

Find out more on our Current Vacancies page

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Internet Explorer 10 now available for Windows 7

2 minute read time · Updated February 12, 2025 · First published February 26, 2013

IE10 now available for Windows 7Last month, we predicted that Internet Explorer 10 would become fully available for Windows 7 users towards the end of February.

Today, Microsoft have announced that Internet Explorer 10 is now out of “Preview” and fully available for Windows 7.

According to Microsoft, when compared to IE9, IE10 is “20% faster for real world Web sites” and has a “60% increase in supported modern Web standards“

If you’re a MIDAS user who uses Internet Explorer, please update your browser to IE10. This will ensure that you have the best possible experience when using our web-based room booking system.

If you’ve already been using the “Release Preview” of IE 10, simply visit windows.microsoft.com/ie in your IE10 “Release Preview”. You’ll then be prompted to update to the latest version.

To download IE10 in other languages, go to http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/internet-explorer/downloads/ie-10/worldwide-languages

IE10 Release To Manufacturing (RTM)
Internet Explorer 10 “RTM”

Internet Explorer 10 should be rolled out to Windows 7 users via Windows Update over the coming weeks. We’ve noticed however that the “About” box of today’s IE10 release (pictured above) contains letters “RTM” next to the “Update Versions”.

What does “RTM” stand for?

“RTM” stands for “Release To Manufacturing”. This is a term used for software that’s made available to computer builders and manufactures before it’s actually fully released to the public.

Take Windows operating systems for example. “Windows 7 RTM” was made available to manufacturers months before Windows 7 actually became available to consumers. This was to allow manufacturers to have devices ready for the day of the actual launch of Windows 7. “RTM” editions of Microsoft software are generally not available directly to the wider public. This makes today’s IE10 release rather unusual! It also makes it unlikely that IE 10.0.9200.16521 (Today’s build) will be the same build that ends up being delivered through Windows Update.

…but perhaps the presence of “RTM” in the About dialog is just a small oversight on Microsoft’s part. After all, it does still state “© 2012” on the dialog after all, despite it being 2013!

UPDATE: IE10 is now available for Windows 7 through Windows Update. However, although it’s classed as an “Important” update, it is not selected by default! So if you have your Windows Update settings to “Install Important Updates Automatically”, this won’t currently also install IE10. You will instead need to manually check for updates, and “tick” the box next to the “Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 7” update in order to install

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What’s new in MIDAS v4.02

4 minute read time · Updated January 19, 2024 · First published February 14, 2013
MIDAS - Valentines Day

Well, seeing as it’s Valentine’s Day today, and we know you love MIDAS – we thought it would be a good opportunity to share with you some of the exciting new features and improvements we’re busy working on for our next release of MIDAS, version 4.02…

More Versatile Options For Booking Times

Start and Finish Times In previous versions of MIDAS, when specifying the times that bookings take place, you were presented with options to set a start and finish time:

We wanted to make specifying booking times even easier and more flexible, that’s why v4.02 will introduce two new time field options: “periods” and “durations“.

Predefined Time Periods

If you only wish your users to book in predefined time slots (“periods”) during the day, this option is just what you need!
You can set up a list of predefined periods of time, with each “period” having it’s own name.
For example, let’s say you’re running MIDAS within a school or other educational environment. In v4.02 you’ll be able to add your school day as a list of predefined time periods, for instance:

Setup pre-defined time periods

This way, instead of previously having to manually select a start time of 11:15 and a finish time of 12:15 on the booking form if a user wanted to book during “Lesson 3”, with this option those fields will be replaced with a simple drop-down list from which they can easily pick “Lesson 3”!

Pre-defined Time Periods

There are no limits on the number of predefined “period” lists you can set up. What’s more you can also specify on a per-user basis which particular list of time “periods” is shown!

Start Time + Predefined Duration

If all your bookings (or appointments) should be of a standard, predetermined length, this new option will be ideal for you!
MIDAS v4.02 will allow you to set up a list of predefined booking durations (in Minutes) that will replace the original “finish” time field. That way, users can simply select a start time for their booking, and a duration.

Start Time and Duration

As with the “period” lists, you can set up multiple lists of booking durations and specify which list should be shown to which user!

As these three booking time options (Start + Finish, Start + Duration, and Periods) can be specified on a per user basis, the flexibility this gives is unmatched! These powerful new booking time options make MIDAS an even better scheduling choice for schools, as well as for businesses that need to schedule appointments!

Monthly Repetitive Booking Generator

Monthly Repetitive Bookings

MIDAS already includes a quick way to generate dates for repetitive bookings i.e. “every Monday for the next 6 weeks”, etc.. but many users have asked for a quick way to generate dates for monthly recurring bookings, say on “the 2nd Thursday of every month”, etc… so we’re giving you just that in v4.02!

Approve/Reject Booking Requests “Silently”

Silently Approve or Reject Booking Requests

When you approve or reject a Booking Request, MIDAS automatically sends an email notification to the original requester informing them that their booking request has been either approved, or rejected (together with a reason for the rejection).
In MIDAS v4.02, we’re including a simple way to override the sending of these notifications so that you can approve/reject requests “silently” without the original requester being informed of your action.

Send “Booking Reminders” to your external calendar (Outlook, Lightning, etc)

Send Booking Reminders as Outlook/Thunderbird Calendar Events

The “Booking Reminder” feature currently allows you to quickly add a reminder for any booking to your “My Messages” screen within MIDAS. In v4.02, we’re also introducing the ability to have these reminders emailed to you as calendar events. That way, if your mail client has an associated calendar application (such as Outlook, or Lighting (for Thunderbird)) you can quickly add these events to your external calendar with just a single click!

Other new features in v4.02:

  • The Monthly Overview can now be printed via the “Print” toolbar icon
  • New option to only accept booking requests from certain email domains
  • Norwegian translation

MIDAS v4.02 is expected to be available to Beta Testers later this month, with a full release shortly after.
If you’d like to help us test this new version, why not become a Beta Tester?

Love MIDAS In the meantime, as it’s Valentines Day and love is in the air, why not help us spread the love and take a moment to share MIDAS with your friends and colleagues on your favorite social networking sites

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Web Browser Roundup – February 2013

6 minute read time · Updated February 12, 2025 · First published February 13, 2013

Here’s our take on all the latest web browser news for February…

  • Internet Explorer – Speculation continues over the IE10 release date for Windows 7
  • Chrome – The most actively developed browser?
  • Firefox – 18.0.2 now available.. development slowing down?
  • Safari – Are its days numbered?
  • Opera – 300 million active users and a full move to WebKit confirmed!

Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer 10 - The Browser You Loved To Hate
At the very end of last month, Microsoft released an IE10 Update Blocker Toolkit. This led to speculation that IE10 for Windows 7 may be just around the corner!

There was some speculation that IE10 may have been pushed through Windows Update on 12th February to coincide with Microsoft’s monthly “Patch Tuesday”, when they were already planning on releasing some “critical updates” to Internet Explorer.

Whilst the critical updates for IE were included in this month’s Patch Tuesday, IE10 itself wasn’t. This isn’t entirely surprising, given that the update blocker (which prevents IE10 from being downloaded/installed via Windows Update) was only made available 13 days earlier. 13 days is hardly enough time for corporate environments (for which the blocker is aimed) to deploy the blocker throughout their IT infrastructure.

It’s instead more likely that IE10 will make a proper appearance for Windows 7 users at the end of the month, or in early March. This is based on when previous “IE blockers” were released. That’s assuming of course the IE team can be dragged away from devoting their time/energy/resources to developing endless web-based games, such as Contre Jour, to showcase how “great” Internet Explorer is. Instead, we think they really should focus instead on developing their actual web browser!

Anyway, you can read more about our predictions for when IE10 will likely be fully available in our blog post, “…and the final release date for Internet Explorer 10 on Windows 7 is…“

MIDAS is currently supported in Internet Explorer 8+ (v10+ recommended)

Google Chrome

Chrome 24
Chrome continues to receive regular updates – in fact the Stable channel was updated only yesterday for Linux users to fix *another* Flash vulnerability!

These frequently discovered Flash vulnerabilities are not confined to Chrome. They can affect any browser on a computer with Flash installed. This is also why Microsoft pushed a couple of “critical updates” to Internet Explorer yesterday.

In our opinion, the sooner Flash is killed off the better! For today’s modern web browser, it serves no real purpose! Everything that Flash can do can these days be accomplished through a use of HTML5, CSS3, and Javascript.

You won’t find any Flash on our website, or within our scheduling web app.

Anyway, back to Chrome; So far this month, there have been no fewer than 3 updates to the “Stable” channel. If you’re a normal Chrome user, you’ll automatically receive updates from the “Stable” channel. Two updates were made to the Chrome Beta for Android, two to the “Dev” channel, and one update to the “Beta” channel… and we’re only halfway through the month!

Google Chrome is arguably the most “actively” developed web browser at the present time.

MIDAS is currently supported in Chrome 9+ (v24+ recommended)

Mozilla Firefox

Firefox 18
At the start of the month, Mozilla, released Firefox 18.0.2.

Primarily a security & stability update, 18.0.2 does have a handful of new features/improvements, most notably:

  • Faster JavaScript performance
  • Better image quality when scaling
  • Improved browser start-up time. (Chrome already has the fastest start-up times out of all the major browsers we tested a couple of months back to determine “Which Browser is Best?“)
  • Support for Retina Display on OS X 10.7 and up

In recent times, Mozilla have been releasing a “major” update to Firefox every six weeks or so. However, we wonder if this release cycle may now start to slow down whilst the Mozilla team focus more of their attention on their upcoming “Firefox OS” project.

MIDAS is currently supported in Firefox 4+ (v18+ recommended)

Safari

Safari 5
Sadly, once again, there’s no new Safari news to report! As you’ll know from our November update, Safari development has taken back seat over at Apple in recent times. Apple instead have been seemingly more focused on their hardware offerings, than on their web browser. As we reported at the end of last year, they’ve currently ceased development on the Windows version of Safari.

And with other browsers, such as Chrome or Firefox available (and soon to become available) for iPad and iOS users, you do have to wonder whether Safari’s days are numbered? Will it be long before Apple take the decision to cease Safari development completely?!

MIDAS is currently supported in Safari 4+ (v5+ recommended)

Opera

Opera 12.14
Last month we reported that Opera were dropping their own rendering engine, “Presto”, in favor of “WebKit” for a new mobile browser “Ice”. WebKit is the rendering engine already used by the likes of Safari and Chrome.

At the time, there was no word as to whether this move would mean that “Presto” was to also be ultimately phased out of their desktop browser offering as well.

Well, now this has been confirmed in an official Opera Press Release. The primary reason for the press release was to mark the fact that Opera now has an impressive 300 million monthly users across its various browser products. In the release CTO of Opera Software, Håkon Wium Lie, also writes:

“The WebKit engine is already very good, and we aim to take part in making it even better. It supports the standards we care about, and it has the performance we need. It makes more sense to have our experts working with the open source communities to further improve WebKit and Chromium, rather than developing our own rendering engine [Presto] further.”

No timescale has been given for this transition. It’s likely though to be a gradual progression over to WebKit rather than a sudden overnight switch.

In some respects it will be sad to see the “Presto” engine go. The more different browser rendering engines there are, the more competition there is to be the “best” and most up-to-date standards compliant browser. But in many other respects, this could actually be a very good move!

WebKit is actively in development by both Apple and Google, and is what powers their respective browsers. Add to this mix the extensive development expertise that the Opera team have. We do mean extensive too! Opera has been in constant development since 1994!). It will likely have Firefox (which uses its own “Gecko” engine), and Internet Explorer (which uses its own “Trident” engine) pretty worried!

Because Chrome, Safari, and soon Opera too, will use the same rendering engine, in theory web pages (and apps) should look identical in which ever of these browsers you use. This should make life easier for web developers! (In practice this isn’t quite true, as each browser has a different release cycle, so new features in the WebKit engine itself make it into one browser weeks, if not months, before another).

MIDAS is currently supported in Opera 9+ (v12+ recommended)

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