MIDAS and Internet Explorer 11

4 minute read time · Updated February 14, 2025

Here are MIDAS HQ we love getting feedback from our customers! Whether positive or critical, all feedback is important to us. Feedback helps us to continually develop and improve our MIDAS room booking & resource scheduling software and service.

Our customer feedback is overwhelmingly positive. In fact, you can read some of these comments on our website. We’re also on independent review sites such as TrustPilot too.

However, in recent times a handful of customers have commented that they perceive the MIDAS user interface (UI) a little “dated”.

We wanted to begin addressing this for our next MIDAS update. For v4.20 we’ve introduced a number of changes and improvements in this area. You can read about these changes in this blog post.

But it’s also useful to explain some of the challenges we’ve faced with regards to the UI over the years.

Ensuring maximum browser compatibility

As you may or may not know, MIDAS has been in continuous active development for well over a decade. Our philosophy has always been to support ALL popular web browsers. That includes Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, Apple Safari, and more recently Microsoft Edge.

Room Booking System for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and EdgeSupporting all these browsers has been an enormous task over the years. But we feel strongly that our users should have a choice of which web browser they use. We’ve been committed to ensuring a consistent MIDAS experience across browsers. We believe users shouldn’t forced to use one particular browser in order to use our MIDAS software.

Slow development of Internet Explorer

It’s fair to say that the most difficult web browser to maintain support for over the years continues to be Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. The challenge has primarily been because IE has always lagged way behind all other vendor’s browser offerings in terms of its development, updates, and support for the latest standards. Essentially, the web has developed and evolved significantly over the years we’ve been developing MIDAS. Yet over this period, Internet Explorer hasn’t kept up.

To some extent we’ve been “held back” over the years by our decision to continue to support customers who force their uses to use Internet Explorer. However, as of today the only version of Internet Explorer we officially support is 11. We’ve already deprecated support for IE10 & 9, IE8, IE7, and IE6 over the past decade.

MIDAS and Internet Explorer 11Continuing to support MIDAS in IE11 for the very small (and ever decreasing) percentage of our users who continue to use this old browser, limits how we can develop MIDAS, particularly in terms of the user interface.

The demise of Internet Explorer 11

Whilst we would have loved to have dropped IE11 support long ago, Microsoft continue to support IE11. They have committed to providing mainstream support for IE11 until the end of life of the operating systems upon which it’s installed. This includes Windows 7, 8 and 10. Windows 7 & 8 have both now reached their EOL (End Of Life) for mainstream support. Windows 10 however is still actively supported by Microsoft and will continue to be for the foreseeable future (for a minimum of at least two years).

That’s why we’ve taken the difficult – but necessary – decision that at some point during 2019 we’ll officially be dropping IE11 support in MIDAS.

This won’t necessarily mean that MIDAS will suddenly cease to function for IE11 users next year. But it does mean that over time new features and new user interface elements and enhancements may not display or – even function correctly – if you continue to access MIDAS using Internet Explorer 11.

Migrating from Internet Explorer

If you’re currently an IE11 user, there is however, plenty of time to switch to a different web browser. There’s also plenty of choice when it comes to modern alternative web browsers.

MIDAS will continue to be supported in recent versions of Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Edge, and Opera.

We appreciate that this may affect a very small number of users. However, we hope this post gives some insight and understanding as to why we’re making this decision. We’re also confident that this will give you plenty of time to switch to an alternative, more modern, web browser.

If you have any questions or concerns over how this may impact you and your organization’s use of MIDAS, please don’t hesitate to contact us. Our friendly team will be only too happy to help!

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MIDAS v4.19 Out Now!

3 minute read time · Updated August 27, 2024

Whilst the UK have been basking in a prolonged heatwave, and preoccupied by the excitement of major sporting events such as the World Cup, Wimbledon, and the Formula One British Grand Prix, we’ve been beavering away on the next update to MIDAS, our popular web based room booking and resource scheduling software.

Today, we’re excited to announce that the latest update to MIDAS (v4.19) is now available!

As our customers have come to expect from our regular releases, this latest update boasts a variety of new and improved features, many of which are as a result of customer feedback.

Here’s What’s New & Improved in v4.19:

How To Get MIDAS v4.19…

New To MIDAS?

We are committed to fair and accessible pricing for all organizations regardless of size. We’re totally upfront and transparent about our pricing structure, and you can purchase MIDAS v4.19 securely through our website and be up and running in no time!

“Self Hosted” Customers:

Self-Hosted customers with ongoing Annual Support Subscriptions will be able to update to v4.19 in the coming days. It only takes a couple of clicks – simply log in to your MIDAS system and go to MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Update

“Cloud Hosted” Customers:

Cloud-Hosted customers don’t need to do anything! – All our active Cloud-Hosted MIDAS customers have now been automatically updated to this latest version of MIDAS!

Thank you for your continued support of our software, and we hope you’ll enjoy the new and improved features that MIDAS v4.19 has to offer!

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NHS Staff Discount celebrating 70 years of the National Health Service

2 minute read time · Updated April 15, 2025

Often viewed as the envy of the rest of the world, the UK’s National Health Service celebrates its 70th birthday today!

The NHS (National Health Service) is the publicly funded healthcare system in the United Kingdom.

It was founded in 1948 and provides a wide range of medical services, including general practitioner (GP) services, hospital care, dental care, mental health services, and more.

The NHS is funded through general taxation and provides free healthcare at the point of use to all UK residents, regardless of their ability to pay.

The system is based on the principle of comprehensive, universal coverage, and is widely regarded as a model for publicly funded healthcare systems around the world.

To celebrate this 70 year milestone, throughout July we’re offering NHS staff £70 OFF our MIDAS Room Booking & Resource Scheduling Software!

..and best of all, this discount can be used to purchase MIDAS on behalf of ANY business or community organization!

NHS staff can claim this special discount right now at [THIS DISCOUNT HAS NOW ENDED]

So if you know someone who works within the NHS, please feel free share this very special limited time offer with them.

But what if you don’t work (or know anyone who works) for the NHS?

Well, make sure you follow us on Social Media as we run special offers and discounts through our social media channels from time to time (in fact, we ran an offer just last month!)

NHS Discount

PLEASE NOTE: This promotion ran during July 2018, and has since ended. To view our current prices, please visit https://mid.as/pricing

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Invoicing Improvements

4 minute read time · Updated March 12, 2024

The forthcoming update to MIDAS – our popular room booking and resource scheduling system – includes a handful of small, but nonetheless useful, updates and improvements to the extensive Invoicing capabilities of the software.

We often receive ideas and suggestions from our customers as to what new features and improvements they’d like to see. May of these suggestions relate to the invoicing capabilities of MIDAS. Taking these on board, our next update (v4.19) will feature…

A new “View Only” option for the “Can use invoicing” user permission

Existing MIDAS administrators will know of the powerful set of permissions that can assigned to accounts on a per-user basis.

One of the available permissions is the “Can use invoicing” setting. This setting allows administrators to allow/deny each user the ability access to MIDAS’ Invoicing features.

Previously, this permission had three possible settings:

  • No – User has no access to any of the invoicing features
  • Yes – User has full access to all of the invoicing features
  • Limited – User may create/generate invoices, but may only view/modify/delete invoices which they created/generated. (They will not have access to invoices added by other users)

For v4.19 we’re adding a forth option to this permission – “View Only“. User’s who’s “Can use invoicing” permission has been set to “View Only” will be able to view all invoices, but will not be able to modify, delete, email or print them, nor will they be able to generate or create new invoices.

This new option is useful to organizations who wish to grant “read only” access to their invoices, for example, for the purposes of auditing.

Exporting invoice summaries in Excel format will format “Invoice Dates” as Excel dates (rather than as text)

In the previous update to MIDAS (v4.18), we introduced the ability to export invoice summaries in native Excel (.xlsx) format.

We’re made a small improvement to this for v4.19. Invoice dates will now be formatted as Excel dates rather than as regular text strings.

This allows for easier manipulation/format of dates when viewing your exported invoice summaries in Excel.

Tax Amount and Grand Total fields become editable

After generating or create a new invoice in MIDAS, its contents may be modified prior to “finalizing” it. A “Finalized” invoice is one which has been printed/emailed to the client.

When editing invoices, by default, MIDAS will automatically re-calculate totals when you make changes. For example, if you charge $50/hour for room hire and you’ve invoiced for 2 hours, the line total on the invoice would be $100. If you then manually change the quantity from 2 to 3 hours, MIDAS will automatically re-calculate the line total of the invoice to $150, and the grand total of the invoice accordingly.

A small “Calculate Totals” tick box is present when modifying invoices. If un-ticked this will prevent MIDAS from automatically calculating totals, allowing you to specify manual amounts if necessary.

However, in earlier version, with the “Calculate Totals” box un-ticked whilst you could modify item rates, quantities, line totals, and tax rate, the tax amount value and grand total values would still be automatically calculated and couldn’t be manually adjusted.

We’ve changed this for v4.19 so that when the “Calculate Totals” box un-ticked, you’ll be able to manually modify the value of any field on your invoice.

We’ve also made one other small change relating to invoices for v4.19. This relates to the way that a client’s “Paid in Full” and “Outstanding” invoices were displayed in the Booking Information Panel.

Previously, these lists were sorted in ascending order. This meant that the client’s oldest paid invoice would appear at the top of the list “Paid in Full” list of invoices.

We’ve changed this sort behavior to descending order for v4.19. Now, the client’s most recently paid/outstanding invoices will be shown at the top (rather than the end) of each respective list.

Click here to continue reading about some of the other new & improved features in MIDAS v4.19!

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