EditGrid Beta 4 (rev 1925) is a major release upon an important revamp to the back-end architecture for storage and computation. The most notable new features are:

• Absolute and relative referencing fully supported — now EditGrid will automatically update formula reference for you upon copy-and-paste and row/column insertion/deletion.
• Advanced importing — import cell data and formula as well as row/column size, cell alignment, font size, cell background and other spreadsheet onto EditGrid. Displayed to the extent supported by Public Beta 3.
• More functions supported — 500+ functions now fully supported for maximum inter-operability with MS Excel and other common spreadsheet applications.

Other new features include:

• [#4129] Insert line-break at grid mode
• [#4261] More user-friendly error pages
• [#4280] Quick link for uploading spreadsheet
• [#4184] More prominent Upload button
• [#4183] Export button in grid mode
• [#4186] [#4260] Toolbar outlook revamp

Also fixed in this release are:

• [#4293] Log out after selecting “remember me”
• [#4247] Display context menu correctly on FireFox with certain plugins installed
• [#4270] Effect of pasting style
• [#4269] JavaScript error upon hitting Ctrl+Enter
• [#4272] Deleted sheet appears on public sheet list
• [#4271] Sheet cloning malfunction
• Robots’ edits should update a spreadsheet’s last modification user and time

Public Beta 3.1 (rev 1726)

• [#4231] Past revisions should be readonly
• Fixed link to retrieve blog’s RSS feed
• New release box on home page
• [#4222] Fixed MROUND() (hopefully, no need to fix these any more from next release onwards)
• [#4198] FIXED ROUND() (hopefully, no need to fix these any more from next release onwards)
• [#4188] Do not warn against unsaved and unmodified new spreadsheet, but warn against unsaved imported spreadsheet

I posted our URL to Reddit, that is.

After 3 private releases, we launched EditGrid’s Public Beta 1 on 7th April. Our marketing strategy then was to “leak” it to those who just might be interested. We used Technorati to search for some relevant blogs and asked the blog owner to take a look at EditGrid by posting a comment. This is when Omar wrote the first review on EditGrid in the whole blogosphere.

On 21st April, we launched EditGrid Public Beta 2. We have longed for sharing EditGrid onto our favourite sites with a wider audience. We would probably have done it one more release later — but then I saw a good opportunity to do this a bit earlier, probably too good to let it pass by.

I read a post at Reddit titled “The Top “Web 2.0″ Startups: You Decide (Paul Graham)” on 24th April calling for voting of the most admired Web 2.0 startup at a subreddit. At that time, there were less than 25 companies posted. By natural instinct, I immediately posted EditGrid to there. Indeed I was probably too excited by the posting — I even got the URL wrong! Fortunately the beauty of Web 2.0 bailed us out this time — almost immediately after my post and before I realised the error, another redditer, konrad_ has already re-posted our site with the URL corrected. So I simply deleted my entry and gave my vote to konrad_’s post.

Thanks to early mover advantage, our post stayed on the first page of web2.reddit.com for about a day and it has generated a small avalanche effect. During this short period of time, our site was spread to del.icio.us, Emily Chang’s eHub, StumbleUpon.com, diggdot.us, popurls.com, weblinks.ru, bloglines.com, netvibes.com, www.szanalmas.hu, etc..

Within 3 days, we have attracted ~5,000 unique visitors, ~20 blog mentions and ~300 new users. The result may be far from impressive, but to us it is a pretty encouraging first step.

Here, we would like to sincerely thank:

• Reddit for such an excellent product launch platform.
• konrad_ (a redditer) for correcting the link for us.
• Users who helped spreading EditGrid to other sites.
• Omar for his 1st and 2nd review.
• Saul Weiner for his encouraging blog post and all other bloggers who mentioned us.
• Last but definitely not least, users who tried EditGrid and gave us comments.

We promise a better and better EditGrid! You make us work a lot harder.

EditGrid Beta 3 (rev 1664) sees a critical improvement on the usability on the web. Notable new features include:

• [#3708] RSS feed of public sheet list
• [#4148] Enhanced range editing performance
• [#4217] Enhanced range formatting performance
• [#4144] More usable mouse scroll
• [#4141] Declare support of all browsers based on Gecko 1.7+
• [#4175] Better differentiate between insert row/column and delete row/column
• [#4169] Link to function reference from function picker
• Revamped home page
• [#3925] Sheet properties
• [#3968] Highlight active row/column header
• [#3905] Single cell cut/copy, multiple cell paste
• [#3906] Multiple cell cut/copy, multiple cell paste
• [#4121] Copy from one spreadsheet, paste at another spreadsheet (same session)

Also fixed in this release are:

• [#4131] in find toolbox would now start finding the next match
• [#4196] COUNTIF() can now count string values
• [#4195] Context menu on sidebar
• [#4192] Fixed bug where hiding a toolbox (eg function picker) on an unsaved spreadsheet may lead to data loss
• [#4124] String formula references now updated automatically
• [#4137] Fixed bug where focus on grid is lost after closing a toolbox