EditGrid was a

Web 2.0 Web 2.0 (also known as participative (or participatory) web and social web) refers to websites that emphasize user-generated content, ease of use, participatory culture and interoperability (i.e., compatibility with other products, systems, and ...

spreadsheet A spreadsheet is a computer application for computation, organization, analysis and storage of data in tabular form. Spreadsheets were developed as computerized analogs of paper accounting worksheets. The program operates on data entered in cel ...

service, operated via

Internet access Internet access is the ability of individuals and organizations to connect to the Internet using computer terminals, computers, and other devices; and to access services such as email and the World Wide Web. Internet access is sold by Internet ...

(

web-based application A web application (or web app) is application software that is accessed using a web browser. Web applications are delivered on the World Wide Web to users with an active network connection. History In earlier computing models like client-serve ...

). It offered both a free-of-charge service to personal users and a

subscription service The subscription business model is a business model in which a customer must pay a recurring price at regular intervals for access to a product or service. The model was pioneered by publishers of books and periodicals in the 17th century, an ...

to organizations and was available on a number of partner sites and channels. EditGrid was shut down on May 1, 2014.

History

EditGrid was developed, provided and maintained by

Team and Concepts Team and Concepts (TnC) is a Hong Kong-based company founded by David K. F. Lee and others in 2003. It is known as the provider of the Web 2.0 online spreadsheet, EditGrid. TnC was founded in 2003 in the height of SARS by a group of young entre ...

, a

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

-based company. The first public

beta Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; grc, βῆτα, bē̂ta or ell, βήτα, víta) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Modern Greek, it represents the voiced labiod ...

release of EditGrid was launched on 7 April 2006. It registered its 10,000th personal user in November 2006. In January 2007 EditGrid started to offer organization accounts for free trial and also became available on

Salesforce.com Salesforce, Inc. is an American cloud-based software company headquartered in San Francisco, California. It provides customer relationship management (CRM) software and applications focused on sales, customer service, marketing automation, an ...

's App Exchange platform. On 14 February 2007, EditGrid officially declared out-of-beta and launched its

. In June 2007, EditGrid announced a $1.25 million series A investment from the WI Harper Group. EditGrid announced a series of changes to its business in September 2009. According to the change, they were no longer supporting users through future enhancements or subscription based accounts. The user forum and the wiki have been closed. In October 2009 Apple had bought EditGrid.

Features

Touted as the most advanced and well-polished

Ajax Ajax may refer to: Greek mythology and tragedy * Ajax the Great, a Greek mythological hero, son of King Telamon and Periboea * Ajax the Lesser, a Greek mythological hero, son of Oileus, the king of Locris * ''Ajax'' (play), by the ancient Greek ...

-enabled spreadsheet, EditGrid included features for shared access and online

collaboration Collaboration (from Latin ''com-'' "with" + ''laborare'' "to labor", "to work") is the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. Most ...

on top of conventional spreadsheet functionalities. Its Real-Time Update (RTU) feature allowed multiple users to see changes on a spreadsheet immediately, and it was considered a winning feature among similar products. Its Remote Data feature was able to retrieve live data on the web, while its My Data Format (MDF) feature allowed users to customise the output format using

XSLT XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) is a language originally designed for transforming XML documents into other XML documents, or other formats such as HTML for web pages, plain text or XSL Formatting Objects, which may subseque ...

, such as live

KML Keyhole Markup Language (KML) is an XML notation for expressing geographic annotation and visualization within two-dimensional maps and three-dimensional Earth browsers. KML was developed for use with Google Earth, which was originally named Key ...

for

Google Earth Google Earth is a computer program that renders a 3D computer graphics, 3D representation of Earth based primarily on satellite imagery. The program maps the Earth by superimposition, superimposing satellite images, aerial photography, and geog ...

. Other features included multiple

access control In the fields of physical security and information security, access control (AC) is the selective restriction of access to a place or other resource, while access management describes the process. The act of ''accessing'' may mean consuming ...

levels, revision history,

chart A chart (sometimes known as a graph) is a graphical representation for data visualization, in which "the data is represented by symbols, such as bars in a bar chart, lines in a line chart, or slices in a pie chart". A chart can represent tabu ...

ing,

live chat A web chat is a system that allows users to communicate in real-time using easily accessible web interfaces. It is a type of Internet online chat distinguished by its simplicity and accessibility to users who do not wish to take the time to insta ...

permalink A permalink or permanent link is a URL that is intended to remain unchanged for many years into the future, yielding a hyperlink that is less susceptible to link rot. Permalinks are often rendered simply, that is, as clean URLs, to be easier to ...

s and more than 500 spreadsheet functions. Apart from access from its main site, spreadsheets hosted on EditGrid could be accessed on third-party websites by means of its post-to-

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

feature. In September 2007, the EditGrid iPhone Edition was launched at the Office 2.0 Conference. In September 2008, EditGrid had launched its

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of Website, websites use JavaScript on the Client (computing), client side ...

Macro support, enabling user-programmed macros to manipulate EditGrid spreadsheets using JavaScript.

Integration and interoperability

EditGrid was available as a module on

Netvibes Netvibes is a French company that offers web services. History The company was founded by Tariq Krim and Florent Frémont in 2005. In August 2006, Netvibes closed a funding round of €12 million led by Accel Partners in London along with Index V ...

Pageflakes Pageflakes was an Ajax-based startpage or personal web portal similar to Netvibes, My Yahoo!, Myhomepage, iGoogle, and Microsoft Live that operated from 2005 until January 2012. The site was organized into tabs, each tab containing user-selected ...

and Google Personalized Homepage. EditGrid was also available on Salesforce.com's AppExchange platform. EditGrid also formed part of the offering of Central Desktop, ShareOffice and

ThinkFree Office Hancom Office, formerly ThinkFree Office, is a proprietary office suite that includes a word processor, spreadsheet software, presentation software, and a PDF editor as well as their online versions accessible via an internet browser. ThinkFree ...

. In addition, developers could make use of the EditGrid

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standa ...

to build custom applications. There were a number of EditGrid add-ons that mashed up other services. One of these, Grid2Map, turned longitude-latitude pairs into placemarks on

Google Maps Google Maps is a web mapping platform and consumer application offered by Google. It offers satellite imagery, aerial photography, street maps, 360° interactive panoramic views of streets ( Street View), real-time traffic conditions, and rou ...

Multilingual

In addition to the default

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

version, EditGrid was available in eight languages:

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...

, French,

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

Brazilian Portuguese Brazilian Portuguese (' ), also Portuguese of Brazil (', ) or South American Portuguese (') is the set of varieties of the Portuguese language native to Brazil and the most influential form of Portuguese worldwide. It is spoken by almost all of ...

Simplified Chinese Simplification, Simplify, or Simplified may refer to: Mathematics Simplification is the process of replacing a mathematical expression by an equivalent one, that is simpler (usually shorter), for example * Simplification of algebraic expressions, ...

and

Traditional Chinese A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays or ...

, largely thanks to a community localisation project.

Organization account

EditGrid was available to organisation users on a

software-as-a-service Software as a service (SaaS ) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SaaS is also known as "on-demand software" and Web-based/Web-hosted software. SaaS is cons ...

basis. Organisation users were supported by SSL-encrypted traffic, user account administration and management reports on top of the features available to personal users. EditGrid organization accounts had become completely free-of-charge for all users since September 2009.

Software architecture

EditGrid had been developed on an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

software architecture. It ran on

Catalyst Catalysis () is the process of increasing the rate of a chemical reaction by adding a substance known as a catalyst (). Catalysts are not consumed in the reaction and remain unchanged after it. If the reaction is rapid and the catalyst recyc ...

as the web application framework and used

Gnumeric Gnumeric is a spreadsheet program that is part of the GNOME Free Software Desktop Project. Gnumeric version 1.0 was released on 31 December 2001. Gnumeric is distributed as free software under the GNU General Public License; it is intended to r ...

as its back-end support. It adopted

technology at the front-end.

Acquisition

Apple, Inc Apple Inc. is an American multinational technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, United States. Apple is the largest technology company by revenue (totaling in 2021) and, as of June 2022, is the world's biggest company ...

acquired EditGrid in 2009.

References

External links

EditGrid

EditGrid Help Centre
{{Apple Freeware Online spreadsheets Plotting software