I would like to know how to read data from a multi-worksheet MS Excel 2003 file using nothing, but jquery. I have read several solutions for PHP/JQuery, ActiveX, etc..., but
Office Web Components provide an api to excel documents via javascript (or vb). They are poorly documented but for intranet type applications they can get the job done. I have used them for the pivot table functionality in IE6 and do not know if it will work with Firefox.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Web_Components
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=beb5d477-2100-4586-a13c-50e56f101720&DisplayLang=en