If your MIDAS booking system is currently configured to send emails via Microsoft’s SMTP servers, it’s time to take action.

Microsoft has announced that it will be retiring support for SMTP AUTH (also known as “Basic Authentication” for SMTP) in 2026. Once this change takes effect, any application which is configured to use Microsoft SMTP endpoints for outgoing mail will no longer be able to send emails.

For MIDAS, if you’re using Microsoft’s SMTP servers, this means that booking confirmations, reminder emails, and other automated notifications sent from MIDAS would silently fail – potentially disrupting your organization’s scheduling and communications.

Here’s what you need to know, and what steps to take before the deadline.

What Is SMTP AUTH and Basic Authentication?

SMTP AUTH is a method that allows applications to authenticate with a mail server using a username and password in order to send outgoing email. It has been widely used for decades.

Why is Microsoft removing Basic Authentication and SMTP AUTH?

It’s worth noting that Microsoft’s decision to retire SMTP AUTH is driven by their own platform strategy around modern authentication – it doesn’t mean that sending email via SMTP is inherently insecure. Under the hood, SMTP works the same way it always has, and the username/password authentication used by SMTP hasn’t fundamentally changed. What Microsoft is retiring is the ability to authenticate to their mail servers this way, as they push users towards OAuth-based access within their ecosystem. MIDAS does not currently support OAuth, but this is not a concern — there are plenty of reliable, independent SMTP providers that continue to support standard SMTP authentication without any issues.

Are You Affected?

You may be affected if your MIDAS booking system’s outgoing email settings are currently configured to use any of the following SMTP servers:

• smtp-mail.outlook.com — used by personal Outlook.com/Hotmail accounts
• smtp.live.com — an older endpoint also associated with Outlook.com/Hotmail/Live accounts
• smtp-legacy.office365.com — a temporary fallback endpoint for Microsoft customers that stilled relied on SMTP AUTH after the initial Basic Auth deprecation push.
• smtp.office365.com — An Exchange Online endpoint used by Microsoft 365 services.
• outlook.office365.com — another Exchange Online endpoint sometimes used in place of smtp.office365.com

You can check your current email sending settings via MIDAS Admin Options > Email.

The good news is that the fix is straightforward, and we’ve made it as easy as possible for MIDAS customers.

For Cloud-Hosted MIDAS Customers

If you’re on our cloud-hosted platform, we have the simplest possible solution for you: switch to MIDAS’s built-in Zero-Configuration Email Delivery.

This option requires no SMTP credentials, no third-party accounts, and no technical configuration on your part. MIDAS handles email delivery on your behalf, so you don’t need to worry about SMTP servers at all. You can find full details on how to enable this feature in our dedicated guide:

👉 Zero-Configuration Email Delivery for MIDAS

We strongly recommend all cloud-hosted customers make this switch at their earliest convenience – and certainly before Microsoft’s 2026 deadline.

For Self-Hosted MIDAS Customers

If you run MIDAS on your own server or hosting environment, you’ll need to update your outgoing mail settings to use an alternative SMTP provider. Fortunately, there are several excellent options available, many of which offer generous free tiers that would suit most MIDAS installations.

We recommend the following providers:

SMTP2GO

SMTP2GO is a reliable, cloud-based email delivery service with a free tier that allows up to 1,000 emails per month. It’s straightforward to set up and works seamlessly with MIDAS’s outgoing mail settings. Simply create a free account, verify your sending domain, and update your MIDAS SMTP settings with the credentials provided.

Mailgun

Mailgun is another popular transactional email service offering a free tier for low-volume sending. It provides robust deliverability, detailed sending logs, and is well-suited for automated system emails like those generated by MIDAS. After signing up and verifying your domain, update your MIDAS SMTP configuration with your Mailgun credentials.

To update your SMTP settings in MIDAS, navigate to MIDAS Admin Options > Email and enter the new SMTP server details provided by your chosen transactional email delivery service.

Don’t Wait Until It’s Too Late

According to Microsoft, their revised SMTP AUTH Basic Authentication Deprecation Timeline is as follows:

• Now to December 2026: SMTP AUTH Basic Authentication behavior remains unchanged.
• End of December 2026: SMTP AUTH Basic Authentication will be disabled by default for existing tenants. Administrators will still be able to enable it if needed.
• New tenants created after December 2026: SMTP AUTH Basic Authentication will be unavailable by default. OAuth will be the supported authentication method.
• Second half of 2027: Microsoft will announce the final removal date for SMTP AUTH Basic Authentication.

While Microsoft’s deadline is the end of December 2026, we recommend customers make this change sooner rather than later.

Email is a critical part of how MIDAS keeps your staff and visitors informed – from booking confirmations to reminders and notifications. A disruption to outgoing mail can go unnoticed until someone realizes they never received a confirmation, which can cause real-world scheduling problems.

Taking a few minutes now to update your settings will ensure uninterrupted email delivery well into the future. If you have any questions or need assistance, please don’t hesitate to contact our support team – we’re happy to help.

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Two-Factor Authentication (sometimes referred to as 2FA) is a more secure method of logging into websites or online services.

Traditionally, when you “log in” to a website or online service, you enter your username (typically your email address) and password. Then you click a button, and if the details you enter are valid, you’re logged in.

Unfortunately, many people reuse the same credentials (username / password combination) again and again for multiple websites and online services. The danger of this is that if one of those services gets “hacked” or suffers a data breach where user credentials are exposed, an attacker could potentially then access all other websites and online services that that person uses.

Two-factor authentication combats this. It does so by employing a secondary means of authentication in addition to the traditional username / password combination in order to authenticate a user’s access.

This means that even if a user’s password has been compromised, an attacker couldn’t then this to gain access to someone’s account.

Two Factor Authentication in MIDAS

Since 2015, all MIDAS room booking systems have included optional two-factor authentication. If enabled, this adds an additional layer of account security to our software.

With Two-Factor Authentication enabled, each time a user logins in, a code is sent to their email inbox. The user must then enter this code into MIDAS in order to complete their log in.

But starting with MIDAS v4.38, we’re improving 2FA options and support in our software!

MIDAS v4.38 (and later) now support authenticator apps – including Google Authenticator and Microsoft Authenticator – as an alternative 2FA login option to email.

Per User Two Factor Authentication Settings

Previously, the 2FA option in MIDAS was a ‘global’ setting. This meant that it could be enabled or disabled for all user accounts at once. It was not possible to have ‘per account’ 2FA settings.

We’ve made this more flexible for MIDAS v4.38!

Now, administrators can set whether 2FA is enabled for each individual user account. The 2FA option for each account can also be set.

Available 2FA options are now:

• Authenticator App
• Email

Enabling 2FA Authenticator App Globally in MIDAS

To globally turn on 2FA for all users, administrators can go to MIDAS Admin Options > Manage MIDAS > Security. In the “Two Factor Authentication (2FA)” section, tick the “Enable Two-Factor Authentication For All Users?” box, and then select the “Authenticator App” option:

Click “Save Changes” and 2FA via Authenticator Apps will be enabled for all user accounts.

Enabling 2FA Authenticator App For Individual User Accounts

2FA options are also available on a per-user account basis. Administrators can enable, disable, or change the 2FA method on a user account by going to MIDAS Admin Options > Manage Users & Permissions.

Select the user account you wish to enable 2FA for, and choose “Authenticator App” from the “2FA Login” setting:

Then click “Save Changes”.

How 2FA via an Authenticator App Works

When 2FA authentication via authenticator apps has been enabled on a user’s account, the next time they login, they’ll be presented with a QR Code to scan with their authenticator app:

If they’re unable to scan the QR Code a ‘secret key’ is also provided which can be manually entered into authenticator apps.

The user’s authenticator app will then generate a 6 digit code which they can enter into MIDAS to complete their login.

The QR Code / Secret Key needs only to be scanned/entered into the user’s authenticator app once upon first use. For subsequent logins, the user will simply need to enter the 6 digit code generated by their authenticator app:

Supported Authenticator Apps

Popular FREE authenticator apps supported by MIDAS include:

• Google Authenticator (available for Android and iOS)
• Microsoft Authenticator (available for Android and iOS)
• Apple Passwords App (included starting with iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia)
• 2FAGuard (available for Windows)
• 2fast (available for Windows)
• Authme (available for Linux, macOS, and Windows)
• KeePassXC (available for MacOS, Windows, and Linux)
• Password Manager SafeInCloud (available for Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows)
• Protecc (available for Windows)
• SafeNet MobilePASS+ (available for Android, iOS, and Windows)

However, any OTP authenticator app which generates Timed One-Time Passwords (TOTP) derived from a shared secret value and the current time should be compatible. TOTP codes are typically six digits long and change every 30 seconds.

Resetting 2FA

If a user looses their authenticator app, an administrative user in a MIDAS system can change the user’s 2FA method, or reset their authenticator token. By resetting a user’s authenticator token, the next time the user logs in, they’ll be presented with a brand new QR Code/Secret Key to enter into their authenticator app.

Availability

2FA login authentication has been available since MIDAS v4.10 (2015). However, this implementation is limited to authentication codes sent to users via email. 2FA could also only be enabled globally (for all user accounts)

2FA login authentication via either email or authenticator apps is available in MIDAS v4.38 or later. These options can be enabled globally, or an a per user account basis.

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Often in the release notes for our MIDAS room scheduling software, you may see the entry “Code Optimization”.

What is “Code Optimization”?

Code optimization is the process of refining our software’s source code to make it execute more efficiently, consume fewer resources, or improve its overall performance. It involves strategically modifying source code whilst at the same time ensuring the new code still produces the correct results.

Key goals of source code optimization:

• Enhanced speed: Executing tasks more quickly
• Reduced resource consumption: Using less memory, CPU cycles, or power
• Improved scalability: Handling larger workloads effectively
• Maintainability: Making code easier to understand and modify

Some common source code optimization techniques involve:

• Algorithm optimization: Choosing more efficient algorithms
• Loop optimization: Reducing loop iterations or overhead
• Memory optimization: Minimizing memory usage and allocations
• Input/output optimization: Streamlining data reading and writing
• Caching: Storing frequently used data for faster access
• Compiler optimization: Leveraging compiler features for automatic optimization
• Profiling: Identifying performance bottlenecks to focus optimization efforts

Code Optimization in MIDAS

Over the years we’ve been developing MIDAS, all our code optimization work has been done manually.

This work has involved attempting to simplify and rewrite parts of the source code to be more efficient.

AI Code Optimizing

In our latest release, MIDAS v4.35, for the very first time, a small section of source code has been optimized with the assistance of AI (or Artificial Intelligence).

We performed this AI code optimization as an experiment to see whether AI could potentially be used to aid our development processes in the future.

We chose a small “subroutine” from our software and asked an AI if it could optimize it for us.

A “subroutine” is essentially a small block of code which can be re-used and “called” repeatedly during a program’s execution.

The subroutine within the MIDAS software code that we asked an AI if it could optimize for us was basically a function which converts dates to “epoch” time.

Epoch time is the number of seconds that have elapsed since January 1, 1970 (midnight UTC/GMT).

How did the AI optimized code perform?

Our original subroutine was 15 lines of code long. Using AI to optimize code, reduced this subroutine down to just 9 lines of code.

However, the initial source code that the AI generated for us did not just work “out of the box”. In fact, it didn’t work at all!

But using this AI generated code as a “template”, our team was able to modify the generated code so that it worked and produced the correct results.

Our team then extensively tested the new subroutine to ensure that it consistently produced the same expected output as the original subroutine.

Once we had a working subroutine that we were confident in, the next step was to “benchmark” the new routine against the old one. After all, there would be no point in using the new routine if there were no performance gains to be had, or indeed if the new code performed worse than the original.

To test this, we ran each subroutine 10,000,000 (10 million times), and analyzed the results:

To explain the above results, over 10 million iterations of each subroutine, the new AI optimized subroutine was more efficient. It ran (executed) quicker, and consumed less processing (CPU) power to achieve the same results as the original subroutine.

On our test server, the optimized subroutine was able to run 369,085 times in the space of one second, compared with 330,229 times in the space of a second for the original subroutine.

Ok, so the original subroutine was pretty quick and efficient to begin with – but with the assistance of AI, we were able to improve its efficiency by almost 12%.

The future of AI code optimization

Firstly, don’t worry, Artificial Intelligence is not about to take over the development of our MIDAS software!

MIDAS has been – and will remain – coded, developed, and maintained by human programmers.

But our experiment – on a very small part of our code – has demonstrated that AI tools may be able to assist our human developers to write ever more efficient source code.

The result of such carefully applied optimizations is that our software can potentially run faster, use resources more efficiently, and provide a better overall user experience.

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It’s an exciting time in the world of Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially when it comes to AI powered interactive chat “bots”.

You may well have heard about “ChatGPT“, which is funded by Microsoft, and who are now starting to integrate its capabilities into the Bing search engine.

You may have also heard about Google’s rival, “Bard” (now know as “Gemini”), who are also integrating their AI chat bot into their search engine.

So for a bit of fun, we decided to put both of these leading AI chat bots to the test. We asked them both a very simple question to see if they knew…

“What is MIDAS room booking software?”

Here’s what ChatGPT has to say…

MIDAS (which stands for Meeting Room Scheduling) is a web-based software application designed to help organizations manage their room booking and scheduling needs. The software allows users to book meeting rooms, conference rooms, and other facilities quickly and easily, and provides a range of tools to help manage the booking process efficiently.

MIDAS allows users to set up and manage multiple rooms, view real-time availability, and make bookings directly through the software. It also includes features such as email notifications, automated invoicing, and reporting tools to help track usage and optimize room allocation.

MIDAS is a popular choice for businesses, schools, and other organizations that need to manage their room scheduling needs efficiently. It is easy to use, flexible, and customizable, making it suitable for a wide range of applications.

– ChatGPT

Here’s what Google’s Bard has to say…

MIDAS is a cloud-based room booking software that helps businesses and organizations of all sizes manage their meeting and event spaces. With MIDAS, users can easily book rooms, track room availability, and manage room reservations. MIDAS also offers a variety of features that can help businesses save time and money, such as:

• Real-time availability: MIDAS provides real-time availability of rooms, so users can always see which rooms are available and book them quickly and easily.
• Group booking: MIDAS makes it easy for users to book rooms for groups, so they can easily coordinate their schedules and ensure that everyone has a space to meet.
• Reporting: MIDAS provides detailed reports on room usage, so businesses can track their spending and make informed decisions about how to allocate their resources.
• Integrations: MIDAS integrates with a variety of other business systems, so users can easily manage their room bookings from within their existing workflows.

MIDAS is a powerful and flexible room booking software that can help businesses and organizations of all sizes save time and money. With MIDAS, users can easily book rooms, track room availability, and manage room reservations. MIDAS also offers a variety of features that can help businesses save time and money, such as real-time availability, group booking, reporting, and integrations.

Here are some of the benefits of using MIDAS room booking software:

• Save time and money: MIDAS can help businesses save time and money by automating the room booking process. With MIDAS, users can easily book rooms, track room availability, and manage room reservations. This can free up staff time to focus on other tasks, and it can also help businesses avoid overbooking and underutilizing their meeting and event spaces.
• Improve efficiency: MIDAS can help businesses improve efficiency by providing a centralized platform for managing room bookings. With MIDAS, users can easily see which rooms are available, book rooms, and track room reservations. This can help businesses avoid the hassle of manually tracking room availability and booking rooms.
• Increase collaboration: MIDAS can help businesses increase collaboration by providing a platform for users to share information about room bookings. With MIDAS, users can easily see which rooms are available, book rooms, and track room reservations. This can help businesses ensure that everyone is on the same page when it comes to meeting and event planning.

Overall, MIDAS is a powerful and flexible room booking software that can help businesses and organizations of all sizes save time and money. With MIDAS, users can easily book rooms, track room availability, and manage room reservations. MIDAS also offers a variety of features that can help businesses improve efficiency and increase collaboration.

– Bard

Our thoughts…

We have to admit that on this occasion, we preferred Google Bard’s response. It was certainly a more in depth summary of our MIDAS software.

ChatGPT’s response – whilst concise – was a little misleading. It claimed that “MIDAS” stands for “Meeting Room Scheduling”.

Whilst MIDAS is indeed a meeting room scheduling system, the acronym “MIDAS” itself doesn’t stand for “Meeting Room Scheduling”. For a clue as to what MIDAS does stand for, see this blog post.

AI chatbots are certainly having a bumpy ride of late.

Back in February this year, $100bn was wiped off Google’s parent company, Alphabet’s shares, after Bard made a mistake and investors became nervous.

More recently, a man widely considered to be the “godfather” of Artificial Intelligence, who quit his job at Google, has warned about the growing dangers from developments in the field.

When two big rivals – Google and Microsoft – both launch competing AI ChatBots, the race is on. Yet many are warning that we need to slow down AI development and ensure that ethics are taken into account.

In the fifteen plus years that we’ve been developing MIDAS, we’ve seen (and implemented) numerous technological advances. It’s exciting – if not also a little scary – to think where the advancements in AI might take us in just a few year’s time.

UPDATE: January 2024: We’ve used AI for the first time to help optimize some of our MIDAS code! Read more about this in our optimizing code with AI blog post.

UPDATE: February 2024: “Bard” has now been rebranded as “Gemini”.

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This isn’t strictly true!

What in fact Microsoft have announced is that “Beginning January 12, 2016, only the most current version of Internet Explorer available for a supported operating system will receive technical support and security updates“.

What this essentially means is that if you’re a Windows 7 user with Internet Explorer 9 or 10 installed, only Internet Explorer 11 will continue to be supported going forward.

However, if you’re a Windows Vista user, the highest version of Internet Explorer that can physically be installed on that operating system is IE 9. Therefore, if you’re currently running IE 7 or 8, only IE 9 will be supported on your operating system going forward, so you should update to IE 9.

The following table from Microsoft outlines which versions of Internet Explorer they will continue to support as from today:

Our web-based room booking and resource scheduling software, MIDAS, is currently supported in IE9+ and all other major browsers.

Over the years we have previously dropped support for MIDAS in IE6 in 2011, IE7 in 2012, and most recently IE8 in 2013.

Whilst we have no immediate plans to drop support for IE9, it’s likely that our support for this aging browser will within the next couple of years. Therefore, if you’re using an older Windows operating system, like using Internet Explorer, and can’t update to a more recent version of Windows, we’d encourage you to at least ensure that your browser is the most up-to-date it can be for your particular operating system.

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Today, Microsoft have launched their latest operating system, Windows 10, and with it a brand new web browser called “Edge“. Edge is designed to be the successor to their long running Internet Explorer web browser.

If you’ve been following our blog, then you’ll already know a bit about Windows 10 and Microsoft Edge…

Windows 10 is a FREE update for all current users of Windows 7, 8, or 8.1. It is being slowly rolling out in the coming weeks. But if you can’t wait that long Microsoft have provided tools to download Windows 10 now)

Our world-class web based room booking and resource scheduling software, MIDAS, is already fully compatible. So if you’re considering making the jump to Windows 10 but are worried about compatibility issues with your existing apps and software, rest assured MIDAS will work on Windows 10 and Microsoft Edge!

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Along with Windows 10, Microsoft have been developing a brand new web browser that will be the successor to their long running Internet Explorer web browser (although both browsers will be included in Windows 10). The name of Microsoft’s new flagship browser for Windows 10 is Microsoft Edge, and yesterday Microsoft announced the release date for Windows 10 as being July 29th 2015.

We’re pleased to announce that as well as continuing to support our Web Based Room Booking & Resource Scheduling, MIDAS, in all major web browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Safari), we’ll be adding Microsoft Edge to that list as well!

We’ve already been testing MIDAS in the preview builds of Edge, and we’ve been impressed with what we’ve seen so far – Edge offers noticeable performance improvements over Internet Explorer.

The good news is that the current version of MIDAS (v4.09) will work with Edge right out of the metaphorical box! So if you’re keen to upgrade to Windows 10 (which, by the way is a FREE upgrade for Windows 7/8 users within the first year of Windows 10’s release!) but are worried about compatibility issues with MIDAS, then fear not! – we’ve got you covered!

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“Open Source” is a term referring to software that whose source code is available for modification or enhancement by anyone. All other major web browsers (Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and Safari are based on open-source components). Presently, Internet Explorer is the only one of the big 5 browsers to remain entirely “closed source”.

As part of their #AskIE event on Twitter today, questions were invited on the current status and development of Internet Explorer. One question in particular was posed as to whether Internet Explorer would “ever consider going open source to speed up develop/bug fixing?“. The response to this question from the people behind the browser was “We consider many things!“

Why is this significant?

Well, Microsoft have come under much criticism in the past over how slowly they release major updates to their browser. Five years passed, for example, between the releases of IE6 and IE7, and then another 3 before IE8! (Compare that with say Mozilla, who’ve been releasing major updates to Firefox every six weeks for some time now!). Whilst there were of course critical “security updates” and patches to IE in those big gaps between major releases, no “new features” or support for new web standards were introduced. This meant a headache for developers of websites and web based apps.

Developers had to ensure “backwards compatibility” with “stagnant” versions of IE. At the same time, developers wished they could take advantage of newer web standards and technologies which all the other major browsers supported, yet IE didn’t.

In the development of our browser based room booking system, MIDAS, we’ve had to take difficult decisions in the past. We’ve previously decided to drop support for IE6, IE7 and then most recently IE8. This was despite these browsers still having notable market share at the time we took those decisions.

To add to that, whenever Microsoft have released a “major” update to Internet Explorer, it’s not always available for all Windows Operating Systems. Windows XP users for example can’t run anything higher than IE8. Actually, if you’re still using Windows XP… well, you really shouldn’t be!!

Would Internet Explorer becoming “open source” help?

Well, first of all, more developers would be able to get involved in the project by adding support for new and emerging technologies and standards. Secondly, it would also mean that bugs could be more readily identified and fixed. These two factors alone would undoubtedly lead to a faster release cycle, and greater compatibility with the latest standards!

In terms of support for the latest web standards, Internet Explorer is way behind. IE11 (the current version of IE generally available) is only 67% compatible with the latest web standards. This compares to Opera 22 and Firefox 30, both on 85%, with Google Chrome 35 edging ahead with 86% compatibility (Source: caniuse.com)

We’d love to see a faster release cycle for Internet Explorer and the same support for technologies and standards in IE that other browsers have had for some time!

On a positive note, earlier this week, a new “developer preview” of Internet Explorer emerged. This was made available through the new “Internet Explorer Developer Channel“. This preview is designed to give developers like us a first look at what to expect in IE12. The big question now is how long will it be until IE12 actually becomes available to end users? Will Microsoft wait until Windows 9 is released (Like they did with IE10 and Windows 8), or will we see the next major update to Internet Explorer sooner?

Let’s hope so!

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We put the latest web browsers head-to-head to try to find out which one is best!

In developing a powerful and feature-rich browser based room booking and resource scheduling system that’s supported in all five major browsers, we often get asked “So, which is the best web browser?”.

This time last year we put Chrome 23, Firefox 16, Internet Explorer 9 & 10, Opera 12 and Safari 5 head-to-head

Now, twelve months on, and less than a week since Internet Explorer 11 became available for Windows 7, Firefox celebrated its ninth birthday, and just a day after Google Chrome 31 is released, we decided it was high time to once again put the latest web browsers offerings “head-to-head” and independently, rigorously test and benchmark them to find out which one of the five major browsers is currently “the best”….

Browsers Tested

Google Chrome 31	Mozilla Firefox 25	Internet Explorer 11	Opera 17	Apple Safari 5

The Tests

We broadly tested four key areas of browser performance: Speed, Memory Usage, Compliance with standards, and Javascript Performance.

1. Speed

The “Cold Start” test measures the time taken to load up the browser upon its first run after a computer reboot. This is measured from the point at which the browser is executed until the point at which its user interface (UI) is ready to accept input.

The “Non-Cold Start” test measures the time taken to load up the browser on second and subsequent runs after its first run after a reboot. This is measured from the point at which the browser is executed until the point at which the user interface (UI) is ready to accept input.

With the browser open, an empty cache, and showing a blank page (about:blank), the “Page Load Time (No-Cached Load)” test measures the time taken to completely load a complex web page. This is measured from the point at which the “Enter” key is pressed on the URL in the browser’s address bar until the point at which the test web page has fully loaded (as reported by an “onLoad” event on the test web page).

With the browser open, and the test web page already loaded in a single tab, the “Page Load Time (Reload from Cache)” test measures the time taken to reload a complex web page. This is measured from the point at which the F5 key (refresh) is pressed until the point at which the test web page has fully reloaded (as reported by an “onLoad” event on the test web page).

2. Memory Usage

The “Base Memory Usage (Blank Tab)” test measures the amount of memory used by the browser with just a single blank (about:blank) tab open.

The “Memory Usage (10 open tabs)” test measures the amount of memory used by the browser with 10 tabs open, each displaying the home page of a popular website.

3. Compliance

The “HTML5 Compliance” test measures how well each browser conforms to the current state of the HTML5 specification.

The “CSS3 Compliance” test measures how well each browser conforms to the current state of the CSS3 specification.

4. Javascript Performance

There are a number of different Javascript Performance Benchmark tests available today, all of which give quite different results. We’ve analyzed results from 6 of the most popular Benchmarking Tests and aggregated the results below:

Individual details of each of the 6 individual Javascript benchmark test suits used to arrived at these aggregated scores may be found in our full test report, available to view/download at the end of this page.

Summary

Category	Test	Winner	Runner-Up
Speed	Cold Start
	Non-Cold Start
	Page Load Time (Non-Cached Load)
	Page Load Time (Reload from Cache)
Memory Usage	Base Memory
	10 Open Tabs
Compliance	HTML5
	CSS3
Performance	Javascript Performance (Aggregate)

Results

1st Place	2nd Place	3rd Place	4th Place	5th Place
Google Chrome 31	Opera 17	Internet Explorer 11	Mozilla Firefox 25	Apple Safari 5

The above overall positions were derived based upon the sum of the positions that each browser finished in, in each of our tests. For example, in our HTML 5 compliance test, Chrome came first and so was assigned 1 point, Safari came 5th and so was assigned 5 points. Browsers were then ranked according to the lowest number of points to give the 1st-5th places above (1st being the best)

Analysis

Google Chrome
When we last tested the five major browsers back in November 2012, Chrome came first in 8 out of 13 our tests, making it a clear winner!
A year later, and Chrome is still going strong, coming top in 8 out of 15 tests, and second in a further two tests.
Where Chrome still doesn’t perform quite as well is when it comes to its memory usage, using well over 3 times as much memory with a single blank tab open than Internet Explorer 11.

Mozilla Firefox
We were a little surprised that Firefox only came top in 3 out of 15 tests, and only once came runner-up. To Firefox’s credit, its main strength still seems to be in its memory usage. With 10 websites open in separate tabs, the amount of memory used was less than half that of Chrome with the same ten sites open.

Internet Explorer
We were pleasantly surprised by the improvement of Internet Explorer 11 over previous versions as well as other browsers.
IE11 came top in a couple of our tests, and runner-up in a further three.
Where IE11 appears to have improved most over earlier versions of Microsoft’s browser in is the length of time taken to load and pages (either from a server, or from the cache) as well as start/restart the browser itself. In our tests, starting IE11 took just 0.01463 seconds! – some 280x quicker than Opera started.
That said, in general Internet Explorer 11 still has a way to go to come up to par with the other major browsers in terms of HTML 5 compliance.

Opera
A lot has changed with Opera since we last tested browsers twelve months ago. Since then, Opera have switched from using their own “Presto” layout rendering engine to instead using the same engine as Chrome.
Whilst this change has been received with mixed reviews by Opera users, with some unhappy that many of Opera’s original features were dropped, our test results actually show that the “new” Opera is a browser to be reckoned with, out performing Internet Explorer 11, Firefox 25 and Safari 5 in our tests.
Opera 17 came top in 3 out of our 15 tests, and runner-up in 6.
The browser also scored highly on HTML5/CSS3 compliance and in our aggregated Javascript performance tests, however, Opera’s memory usage was fairly high, second only to Chrome. Opera 17 was slow to start, however, once running it loaded and rendered web pages swiftly.

Safari
Our browsers tests were performed on a Windows machine (test specifics are included at the end of this report). Whilst the latest version of Safari is 7, Apple took the decision after the release of Safari 5.1 to no longer continue developing Safari for Windows users – a mistake in our view! Therefore, the most recent version of Safari available to Windows users is 5.1.7, which was used in our testing.
Given that Safari 5.1.7 is now the oldest of the 5 browsers tested, it follows that is doesn’t perform as well as its peers.
However, surprisingly, it did come runner-up in both our memory tests as well as our non-cold start test.

Conclusions – From a Developers Perspective

From our perspective, as developers of a leading web-based room booking and resource scheduling solution, perhaps the most important factors in determining which browser is “best” are compliance with the latest HTML5 and CSS3 standards. As we work hard to ensure our software works well in all the major browsers, this is where having universal standards between browsers becomes so important. In theory, a website (or in our case, a web app), should look and behave the same regardless of the browser being used, which should in theory happen if all browsers complied 100% with standards! Chrome 31 currently comes the closest to the HTML 5 standard with 93% compliance, but as can be seen, CSS3 compliance still has a long way to go for all browsers, with the winning browser in the CSS3 compliance test (Opera 17) only achieving 58% compliance.

Speed (page load time) and Javascript Performance are also important factors for us, as we want our web app to be as fast and responsive as possible. Opera 17 and Chrome 25 loaded pages faster in our tests, with Internet Explorer 11 following close behind. As for performance, both Chrome 25 and Opera 17 outperformed other browsers in our aggregated Javascript performance test scores.

A few surprising finds:

• Microsoft have made some significant steps forward with Internet Explorer 11 over earlier incarnations of their browser.
• Opera 17 performed better than expected
• Firefox 25 performed worse than expected, finishing an overall 4th place in our tests.

MIDAS, our popular Browser-Based Room & Resource Scheduling Software is currently supported in all browser versions we’ve tested here. Find out more at https://mid.as

Conclusions – So which browser should I use then!?

• If you work with lots of browser tabs open at once, and/or the amount of available memory on your system is limited, Firefox 25 would seem a good choice of browser to use, as this used the less memory than other browsers under the same conditions.

• If you regularly open and close your browser, Internet Explorer 11 or Firefox 25 would seem a good choice as these browsers start up quickly. If, however, you tend to keep your browser running most of the time, Opera 17 would be a better choice, as even though its start-up time is considerably longer, initial page load times are the quickest of all the browsers we tested

• If you’re still using an earlier version of Internet Explorer – it’s certainly worth upgrading to IE11, or if that’s not possible (for example, if you’re using Windows XP, you won’t be able to update your Internet Explorer past version 8!), maybe it’s time to try a different browser!?

• At the end of the day, use the browser that you feel most comfortable with! …BUT make sure you keep it up-to-date, and don’t ignore the competition – if you do, you risk being left behind as other browsers overtake yours in terms of their speed, security, memory usage, standard compliance, and performance!

• In recent years, browsers such as Internet Explorer and Opera have been somewhat overlooked by many regular internet users – but if you’ve not used these browsers for years having previously dismissed them – a lot has changed, and it’s certainly worth giving them a second look again now!

View/Download The Complete Web Browser Test Report HERE

Test Specifics

Browsers Tested: Chrome 31.0.1650.48 m | Firefox 25.0 | Internet Explorer 11.0.9600.16428 | Opera 17 (Build 1652) | Safari 5.1.7 (7534.57.2)

Browser tests were performed on an Intel® Atom™ CPU D525 @ 1.80GHz system, with 4GB Ram, running Windows Home Server 2011 SP1 (Windows Server 2008 R2) 64-bit. Each browser was a clean install, using default install and browsers settings, and with no extensions/addons installed or enabled.

Speed tests were measured using Rob Keir’s millisecond timer and PassMark AppTimer v1.0. Each speed test was performed 10 times for each browser, and the results averaged to provide the data presented in this report.

Compliance Tests: HTML5 | CSS3

Javascript Performance Tests: Dromaeo | Speed-Battle | Sunspider | Peacekeeper | Octane | BrowserMark

Memory usage was measured 60 seconds after tabs had finished loading and was measured through the Windows Task Manager. Memory usage includes all associated processes running with the browser (for example, running Safari spawns both “Safari.exe” and “WebKit2WebProcess.exe” processes, the memory usage of both is taken into account)

The 10 sites open in tabs when measuring memory usage (10 open tabs) were:
https//mid.as | http://news.bbc.co.uk | http://facebook.com | https://twitter.com | http://google.co.uk | https://youtube.com | http://wikipedia.org | http://linkedin.com | http://bing.com | http://amazon.co.uk

Test Date: 13 November 2013

The post Best Browser: IE11, Chrome 31, Firefox 25, Opera 17, or Safari 5? appeared first on MIDAS - Room Booking System | Blog.

• Internet Explorer – IE11 preview available & IE11 is to be available for Windows 7
• Firefox – v22 released this week
• Chrome – Now 5% faster on average
• Opera – v15 preview available
• Safari – Even the developers admit its gone quiet!

Internet Explorer

This last week saw Microsoft release the first public preview of Windows 8.1, which contains the first glimpse of what IE11 will have in store for its users!

Microsoft believes that “the best experience of the web is on a Windows device with Internet Explorer 11“. We’ll let you decide!

However, one of the main focuses for IE11 is on better support, performance, and responsiveness for touch actions

According to Microsoft’s corporate vice-president for Internet Explorer, Dean Hachamovitch, speaking at last week’s BUILD developer conference in San Francisco; “Most of the web wasn’t designed for touch, but users still expect it to just work“. An example given was that navigation and interaction within web pages or web apps often relies on “mouseovers”. This is where hovering the mouse over a particular region causes a menu or tooltip to open. The natural behavior for users with a touch screen is to tap the area. This is usually translated into a “click” event rather than a “hover” action, or if they tap and hold, seen as a “right click” event.

In IE11, Microsoft has integrated support for such scenarios, allowing users to touch a hover “hotspot” so that the menu/tooltip stays open rather than automatically clicking the element.

IE11 is also the first of the major browsers to offer HTML5 drag-and-drop support for touch interaction. These “hover” and “drag-and-drop” improvements for touch should offer users on tablets or other touch-screen devices a richer experience when using our web based scheduling software.

The great news too if you’re a Windows 7 user is that like IE10, IE11 will also be available to you! Whilst Microsoft have confirmed this however, there is no specific date for when IE11 may become available for Windows 7. If it’s anything like the delayed IE10 release for Windows 7, Windows 7 users may have to wait 4 months longer than Windows 8 users to get their hands on the next version of IE!

MIDAS is already supported in the preview version IE11, as well as in IE8-10. However, if you’re still an Internet Explorer 8 user, we will no longer be maintaining compatibility with this obsolete browser once IE11 becomes fully available. If this affects you please read this!

Mozilla Firefox

Also within the last week, Mozilla have released Firefox 22, bringing with it a number of improvements and new features. Some of these improvements, particularly those relating to core Javascript performance, should mean your MIDAS experience on Firefox is better than ever!

Firefox 22 also introduces support for new technologies and better compatibility with existing web standards. One of the exciting new technologies introduced with Firefox 22 is “Web Notifications”. This will allow websites/apps to display notification messages on your system (similar to new mail or new message notifications that other applications may display). Notifications are not widely supported by other browsers right now. At time of writing, only Opera 12 and Safari 5 currently support it. Once this becomes more widely adopted, you may see “web notifications” being introduced to MIDAS. For instance, it could be used to notify you of booking reminders as well as new watches or messages. Stay tuned for more in the future on this!

In other highly exciting(!) Firefox news, their logo has undergone a redesigned:

…and yes, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it looks virtually the same! In justifying the new logo, Mozilla explain, “Unlike previous versions, the updated logo was created specifically with mobile in mind. Although we think it looks great at any size, it’s been optimized to be crisper and cleaner on small screens and lower resolution devices. However, it also scales quite nicely for use in retina displays, and (unlike previous versions) can be accurately recreated in SVG so it’s more ‘of the Web’“

MIDAS is currently supported in Firefox 4+ (v22+ recommended)

Google Chrome

We’re having a hard time keeping up with the latest stable version number for Chrome! For Windows, Max, and Chrome OS it’s currently version 27. However the current stable version of Chrome for Linux is 28. This is unusual, as Google tend to keep major version numbers in sync across all platforms!

So, what exciting new features have v27/28 brought? Well, not a great deal actually! Aside from a variety of fixes mainly for Flash-related exploits, the highlight of v27 is the claim that web pages load 5% faster on average!

MIDAS is currently supported in Chrome 9+ (v27+ recommended)

Opera

If you’ve been following our blog, you’ll know that at the start of the year, Opera announced it was ditching its own Presto rendering engine. Instead it was essentially joining forces to use the same rendering engine to that of Google Chrome. Such a major change in the fundamental nature of the Opera browser was going to take time to emerge. After much confusion and changes, at the end of May, Opera lifted the lid on their “next generation” Opera 15 browser to mixed reviews.

As this was the first “preview” release, it was essentially just a shell of a browser. Many of Opera’s previous features were removed, to the anger of Opera’s loyal user base.

However, as June has progressed, so have the updates to Opera 15. These updates haven’t exactly been earth-shattering though. Essentially just offering a handful of fixes each time and a way to import data/settings from Opera 12.

Whilst understandably there’s a massive amount of work involved in changing rendering engines, Opera really need to start getting their act together. They need to remember what set Opera apart from other browsers in the first place if they really expect Opera 15 to complete with other major browsers. Right now, whilst Opera 15 hasn’t yet had a general release, it’s lacking a lot of features and functionality that Opera 12 offered.

That said, MIDAS is supported in Opera 15 (as well as Opera 9-12. v12+ recommended)

Safari

Well, activity on the Safari front just seems to get quieter and quieter each time we post! In fact, on the Safari blog itself they admit they’ve been “quieter than usual” which they attribute to Apple developers being away at a conference(!)

Anyway, A small update to Safari, 6.0.5, was released at the start of the month for OS X and iOS.

At Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference this month, it was announced that Safari 7/6.1 would bring improvements in JavaScript performance and memory usage. There would also be a new look for Top Sites and the Sidebar, and a new Shared Links feature. Additionally, a new Power Saver feature pauses plugins which aren’t in use. Safari 7 for OS X Mavericks and Safari 6.1 (for Lion and Mountain Lion) is expected to be available this Autumn. Sadly, there’s still no sign of any more updates for Safari on Windows (which is still currently stuck at v5.1.7)

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

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