Posts Tagged: v4.20

MIDAS v4.20 Out Now!

Earlier this month we released the latest update (v4.20) to our MIDAS room booking and resource scheduling software!

For this latest update, our main focus has been on updating and improving some of the visual elements of MIDAS, which you can read about in more depth in our previous post. We’ve also introduced a new addon for Microsoft Teams, as well as making several small improvements to MIDAS and also squashed 17 bugs that were discovered since the previous v4.19 release (don’t worry, no actual living bugs were harmed!).

Here’s What’s New & Improved in v4.20:

  • New: Honeycomb, Squares, and Wood visual themes
  • New: Drag & Drop Duplicate/Reschedule touch screen support
  • Improved: Visual themes now all include high-resolution SVG icons
  • Improved: Browser performance when loading data in the Client tab of the Booking Information Panel
  • Improved: After generating invoices from existing bookings, the invoicing screen now refreshes to show newly created invoices
  • Improved: Pending Booking Request screen will no longer show booking fields which have been hidden
  • Change: Bulk modifying venues no longer bulk modifies venue descriptions
  • Fixed: Cumulative roll-up of various fixes for issues discovered since v4.19 – see https://bugs.mid.as for details

How To Get MIDAS v4.20…

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 v4.20 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 v4.20 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 visual themes and user interface improvements in MIDAS!


Theme Improvements

Following on from our previous post, you’ll know about some of the difficulties and challenges we’ve faced over the years in ensuring a consistent user experience can be delivered for our users, regardless of which web browser they’re using.

In response to customer feedback, updating and improving some of the visual elements of MIDAS has been the main focus for our next update, v4.20.

This blog post outlines some of the key visual changes we’re making in order to improve the user interface (UI).


Deprecating some old, less popular themes

The standard (non-HiRes) version of the “Default” theme is being retired, along with the “Pastel” and “Classic” themes.

Pastel Theme for MIDAS

The “Pastel” theme (shown above) was the least used optional theme by our customers. We may re-introduce a similar theme in the future, but for now the “Pastel” theme will no longer be available in v4.20

Classic v3 Theme for MIDAS

The “Classic” theme (shown above) was originally introduced with the release MIDAS v4.00. It was based on the icons in the previous pre-v4.00 interface for MIDAS. As there were significant changes made to various icons between MIDAS v3 and v4, the “Classic” theme’s primary purpose was to ease the transition to v4 for long standing customers familiar with icons from v3. MIDAS v3 was superseded by v4 over six years ago now, and so this interface is now very dated. As such, the “Classic” theme will no longer be available inn MIDAS v4.20.

Standard Resolution Default Theme for MIDAS

The non-HiRes version of the “Default” theme (shown above) was primarily aimed at self-hosted customers who were installing MIDAS onto a server which didn’t support serving SVG images. The non-HiRes default theme version was identical to the “Default-HiRes” theme, but with high resolution SVG icons substituted for lower resolution PNG images.

Nowadays, all modern servers can be configured to correctly serve SVG images. The majority of which being able to serve such content natively. (All our cloud-hosted customers are defaulted to the high resolution, rather than the standard resolution, “Default” theme)

The original purpose of the non-HiRes “Default” theme is therefore pretty redundant, and so has been removed from v4.20.


Updating Existing Themes

High Resolution SVG graphics in MIDAS

The previous “Default-HiRes” theme has been updated and renamed to “Default” for v4.20. The “BrushedSteel”, “HiContrast” and “Slate” themes have all had a face lift too. All of these themes now boast high resolution SVG icons, and improved layouts.

Brushed Steel Theme for MIDAS
High Contrast Theme for MIDAS
Dark Slate Theme for MIDAS

We’ve also increased the size of some visual elements to better aid those with sight difficulties or those accessing MIDAS on very small screen devices. Here’s a comparison of the login screen under the hi resolution “Default” themes in both v4.19 (left) and v4.20 (right):

MIDAS v4.19 login screenMIDAS v4.20 login screen
v4.19 Login Screenv4.20 Login Screen

Introducing New Themes!

We’re also adding THREE exciting new, high resolution themes to v4.20!

Honeycomb

New Honeycomb theme for MIDAS

Squares

New lilac Squares theme for MIDAS

Wood

New Wood effect theme for MIDAS

Additional new themes may also be added in the future. For v4.20 though a total 7 distinctly different themes will be included as standard. No longer will there be a need to download and install (in the case of self-hosted customers) or request (in the case of cloud-hosted customers) optional themes for your MIDAS system. All 7 of these themes are included as standard.


Custom themes

Self-hosted customers will still be able to “tweak” and customize their own visual themes for MIDAS. However, the process for doing this is slightly different than before. We’ve updated our Knowledge Base with instructions in this regard.


Future development

The new way in which themes are handled starting with v4.20 make it easier for us to introduce further themes in the future. It also serves to lay future foundations for an often requested “white label” edition of MIDAS.