Public Beta 18.4 (rev 6526)

• Optimised image loading speed
• [#6216] Fixed Strikethrough persistence malfunctioning
• Fixed URL in email
• [#6206] Fixed bug in trackback UTF8 recognition

Public Beta 18.3 (rev 6494)

• Fixed bug where site header would occasional disappear
• Fixed bug in removing/rejecting an incoming spreadsheet in workspace menu

Public Beta 18.2 (rev 6421)

• [#6163] Improved workspace button rendering in IE

Some substantial stuff here.

More scalable architecture — In this iteration, we have eliminated one important bottleneck. Now we can keep adding servers to meet new usage demand until we have ten times as much users now. By that time, the next bottleneck would also be resolved.

Viewport — EditGrid now loads data onto your browser on demand. Think Google Maps: only when you scroll to a new place on the map, would the map data be transferred to your browser. There is also a smart pre-loading mechanism, so most of the time you don’t need to wait for data to be transferred. Its significance? It hugely improves the initialisation time for large spreadsheets. Before Public Beta 18, all the data on the spreadsheet must be fully transmitted to your browser before the spreadsheet can be set up. Large spreadsheet? Tough — you may as well fetch a cup of tea while waiting. Now? It’s as if you’re just loading a spreadsheet as large as your screen allows.

Workspace Revamp — Our workspace was getting clobbered we added more and more features for you. This major revamp gives you a much more friendly user experience. Let’s thank Reuters for this new feature.

Better Safari Support — We respect our users’ browser choice. Efforts have been spent to make EditGrid work better in Safari. There is still a major issue: Safari in its current release does not support the border-box model, which is intensively used in EditGrid. However, Safari’s next version, which Mac OS X users can preview at WebKit, will support this. We are now testing EditGrid at its nightly build already. When it comes out, we will declare full support. Hope it won’t take long.

Partner API — In line with our partnership strategy, here we officially announce the availability of Partner API which gives our partners full power when integrating the next killer app with EditGrid.

Okay. That’s it.

What will be in Public Beta 19? Sorry, there won’t be Public Beta 19. The next version will be v1.0.

Yes, out of beta.

Public Beta 18.1 (rev 6374)

• Support sheet navigation in Safari
• [#6178] Fixed find malfunction past the last occurrence
• Fixed bug in spreadsheet copy-and-paste
• Fixed bug in sorting toolbox where selected columns fail to be loaded
• Excluded search queries in trackback
• [#6176] Fixed error in remove spreadsheet dialogue
• [#6162] Fixed encoding issue in trackback

Public Beta 18 (rev 6354)

The most notable new features in this release are:

• Revamped |Workspace| — feature sponsored by .
• [#6015] Streamlined sharing mechanism — feature sponsored by .
• [#4981] Salesforce.com AppExchange — officially rolled out on 12th January and now available at Salesforce.com AppExchange.
• Better Safari support. For better behaviour, use the latest development version of Apple Webkit.
• Enhanced grid performance using viewport — on-demand loading of grid data.
• Partner API — easier integration with your killer app. An integration guide is available on EditGrid Wiki. Your service can be the next one — contact us for enquiry.
• [#5723] EditGrid Trackback — see how users use EditGrid on the web.

New organisation features rolled out in this release include:

• [#5665] Spreadsheets tab — see all spreadsheets in the organisation
• [#4029][#5485][#6101] Organisation administrator granted full privilege to manage spreadsheets in the organisation
• [#5484] Organisation administrator granted read/write access to spreadsheets in the organisation
• [#4233] Re-design the inactivate and delete user use-cases
• [#5595] Custom login page for organisation account

Other new features include:

• [#5516] API methods to return revision history
• [#5232] Strikethrough formatting
• [#5681] Enhanced toolbox loading
• [#4910] Named expression — formula evaluation, import and export
• [#5282] Visually focus on selected chart
• [#6013] Rename sheet by double-clicking
• [#5641] Supported more browsers for event-driven RTU and chatting — including Opera 9.0+ and K-Meleon
• RSS feed for finder results
• [#5640] More menu bar items

Also fixed in this release are:

• [#5314] Inadvertent copy of data across sheets
• [#6086] Truncated long tags in |Workspace|
• [#6009] Handled name clash in transfer of sheet ownership
• Cell limit for HTML export
• Better handling of null characters in remote data web fetch

Public Beta 17.6 (rev 5963)

• Fixed bug in sheet deletion authorisation
• Official announcement of Salesforce AppExchange integration

EditGrid is now available at Salesforce.com. We’ve put in a good amount of effort to make EditGrid and Salesforce work seamlessly together. Check it out here!

Major Advantage: subscribers can view, edit and share all their Salesforce reports on EditGrid, and stay on the web throughout without the hassles of downloading and opening reports with MS Excel and then emailing them out. User can also create ad-hoc charts and reports with EditGrid’s rich set of functionalities. All other EditGrid functionalities, including Finder, are available at EditGrid@Salesforce as well. It comes with SSL encryption of all traffic to and from EditGrid servers — every businessman care about security and we understand it.

And, of course, when we launch new functionalities, our users at Salesforce will get it, too. That’s the beauty of delivering in the Software-as-a-Service model.

EditGrid@Salesforce was just officially listed here. The app comes with 30-day free-trial. After the trial period, users will be charged at an affordable pricing of US$5 per user per month.

Want to know more about how it works? We’ve got a screencast for you. If you have any feedback or enquiry, just email us at salesforce@editgrid.com.

Enjoy EditGrid@Salesforce.

[Update] EditGrid is featured as App of the Week in The AppExchange Blog.

This is a late post. We’ve had some busy days, thanks to the Taiwan earthquake. Anyway, late is better then never.

Much happened in 2006. It was when EditGrid was launched. When Google joined and brought lots of attention to this market. When Google acquired Jotspot and hired iRows founders - taking away two players in the trade. It was also when Num Sum, the first online spreadsheet in market, ceased developing and Numbler went open-sourced.

Now the online spreadsheet offerings that remain are (in no particular order): Google Spreadsheets (as part of Google Docs & Spreadsheets), Zoho Sheet (as part of Zoho Office Suite), WikiCalc (as part of SocialText), ThinkFree Calc (as part of Thinkfree Office) and, of course, EditGrid. It seems that we are the only standalone offering here.

Cool, we are lonely now. I think it is good to be focused, for 2 reasons:

1. As an start-up, we never want to be everything to compete with everybody.
2. We still have lots to work to do in this technology domain. The basics are not good enough. We want to make EditGrid faster, capable to load larger spreadsheet, etc. It is too early to diversify.

“Nice, but… you are not a complete solution!” Oh, yes, may be. We have a growing community of loyal users who use EditGrid everyday. I don’t know whether they see us as a complete solution. There may be customers on the street who would come in and say, “Hey, I need a wiki, too!” I can’t tell him/her to open a spreadsheet and put all their wiki article in one cell, can I?

Besides serving our users at the EditGrid.com, we are serving as the technology provider of online spreadsheets, too. Say, if a wiki service come to us and would like to integrate with EditGrid, we’ll work our socks off to support them to make a seamless integration. With partnership, we make EditGrid available to a wider audience, and in the process make both us and our partner a more complete solution. Some active integrations are under way, and don’t be surprised if you find EditGrid available in other online services soon.

By forming partnership, we are making lots of friends. We can focus to deliver a better technology and make it easier to be integrated. If you want EditGrid power in your site, the entry point is this integration guide. I will be waiting for you at my email/IM/skype/phone…

All the best in 2007!

Public Beta 17.5 (rev 5852)

• Limited tag to 32 characters of length
• [#6069] Fixed chart properties toolbox malfunction