Be brave upgrade!

As a software company we face the key question of 'how are we best going to provide our products to our user base?' At Conferma we want to ensure all our products are easily accessible to our clients and updates are made available instantly. To this end we chose to build web based solutions, opposed to desktop applications. This enables our clients to access all our latest releases through a web browser like Internet Explorer or Firefox.

Web Browsers essentially allow you to browse websites (pages/documents) on the internet which are delivered in a presentation language called HTML (HyperText Markup Language). HTML was originally designed to combat the multiple formats universities were using to create documents, by using one format, HTML. The idea was anyone anywhere in the world could access them over the network. The project was started by Sir Tim Berners-Lee whilst he was working at CERN in 1989. Since then the Netcraft Web Server Survey (December 2009) estimates there are over 233.8 million websites exposing over 20.3 billion web pages.

The user experience of websites has exploded over the past few of years (remember that 2007/8 buzz word "web 2.0"?), they've become smarter, faster, more intuitive, desktop-like and all round more powerful. The browsers have enabled developers to do more by offering better support for presentation (CSS), faster JavaScript engines (client side scripts) with AJAX support and application level functionality such as tabbed browsing, plugin support and enhanced security features.

At Conferma we're committed to increasing efficiency in T&E processes by removing the unnecessary items and automating processes where possible and with the release of Hotel Booker V4 we've done just that. We've brought the number of pages down from 8 to 3, enabling bookings to be placed in less than a minute and enhanced the speed of both the profile and booking search - it's quick!

Efficiency savings can also be gained by upgrading your browser, for instance did you know Internet Explorer 6 is over three times slower than Internet Explorer 7 and that Internet Explorer 7 is twice as slow as Internet Explorer 8?

IE6 has served its purpose, but the fact is it's one of the worst performing browsers in terms of security and speed and is no longer supported by Microsoft. As a technology provider offering products over the web we find IE6 actually stifles our development potential by using developer resource to ensure our sites support it, rather than letting them innovate.

We fully encourage users look at the available browsers and upgrade, older browsers are wasting your time...