For v4.25, we’ve made a number of small but significant improvements to the user interface. These include..
New Default Font
Since MIDAS v4.20, the default font used in our software was “Geneva” on MacOS systems and “Tahoma” on Windows systems. Different platforms have different default fonts available, and we wanted MIDAS to look as similar as possible regardless of the OS being used. “Geneva” and “Tahoma” are quite similar in appearance, which is why we originally chose them.
For other systems where neither of these fonts were available, MIDAS would fall back to the closest sans-serif font available.
However, from v4.25, the default font across all operating systems is instead now “Open Sans“:
This font comes included with MIDAS, meaning that our software should now look identical on every operating system!
Larger Font Size
Following customer feedback, we’ve also increased the font size in many areas of the software.
New Drop-Down Lists, Checkboxes and Radio Buttons
You may also note from the previous screenshot a couple of other changes. We’ve fully styled and themed drop-down (select) lists, check (tick) boxes and radio buttons in MIDAS v4.25. Previously, these input elements would be styled by the user’s own browser/operating system. This led to MIDAS looking slightly different for users on different browsers and operating systems.
The new styled inputs for v4.25 look consistent across supported browsers and operating system. Coupled with the increased font size, these new-style inputs are now even easier to select/toggle than before.
Default Template Improvements
We’ve updated a couple of the default templates for v4.25. The “Public Booking Requests” and “Public Web Request” templates have been updated.
Previously, these template defaults made use of an HTML “table” for laying out the header. This worked fine on regular screens, but on smaller mobile devices, it could result in the header being truncated:
Note how the “DEMO” logo has been truncated
So to improve their appearance on smaller screens, for v4.25, we’ve dropped the use of tables in favor of a “flex” layout instead. Here’s the same screen as before, but using a “flex” layout instead. Now on smaller screens, the header components will “wrap” where necessary:
Note how the header components automatically “wrap” on very small screens
We would ideally like to migrate all the default templates (email, invoice, etc) within MIDAS over to a “flex” layout model. However, older email clients don’t fully support “flex” rendering in this way. This would mean that an invoice emailed to a customer may not display correctly in their email client. We do however plan to one day update all default templates to the “flex” layout model. In the meantime, as templates within MIDAS are editable, user may choose to do this themselves!
These improved templates apply to new installations of our software. They won’t be retrospectively applied to existing MIDAS systems. However, existing customers can reset their templates to these new templates via MIDAS Admin Options → Manage MIDAS → Templates → Reset Template.
These are just a few of the new and improved features for v4.25. Keep following our blog as we unveil more on v4.25 in our next posts.
You can also ask questions and discuss the new features of v4.25 over on Reddit.