Compatibility
newObjects Active Label does not depend on other components or OS features that
are specific to the latest versions only. You will be able to use it on your
machines without need of OS or hardware upgrades.
OS compatibility
The newObjects Active Label ActiveX and the supporting application Active
Label Browser are compatible with:
Windows 95/98/ME, Windows NT4/2000/XP/2003 and will work on any future
version.
On Windows 95 and NT4 it is recommended to have Microsoft Internet Explorer
4 or later installed otherwise some features that depend on Windows features
usually installed with IE may not be fully available.
Browser compatibility
The ActiveX can be embedded in WEB pages shown in Microsoft Internet
Explorer 4 or later. IE 3 also can be used but is not recommended.
Mozila FireFox and Netscape with ActiveX plug-in - see this address for
download and information: http://www.iol.ie/~locka/mozilla/plugin.htm
Note that this ActiveX plug-in must be configured to allow each particular
ActiveX. By default it only loads Windows Media Player and nothing else.
It may be possible to use the same ActiveX plug-in with the Opera browser,
but we have not tested the plug-in and the ActiveX with Opera.
Protocol compatibility
Active Label ActiveX and Active Label Browser application support label
data download as well as download of image and text elements. This can be
compared to a WEB page behavior where the label can be compared to the page
itself and the images on the label are like the images on a WEB page.
Furthermore newObjects Active Label supports also upload of labels and their elements
(images for instance). This is close to a form upload from a WEB page, but the
resemblance is not as close as it is in the case of data download.
For download operations Active Label can work over the same protocols as
Microsoft Internet Explorer:
Standard protocols: http:. https:, ftp:, file:, res:, mk: (Windows HTML
help) and so on
Protocols from other vendors: alp (see www.activelocalpages.com):,
hsp: and any other protocol that supports data download.
For upload operations newObjects Active Label fully supports URL protocols that resemble
HTTP behavior. This means they must support at least POST verb with data and
query string parameters. Header support is not required.
Standard protocols: http:, https:
Protocols from other vendors: alp:
Protocols which support data upload but do not resemble HTTP behavior are only
partially supported. This means that success/failure reports will not be
reliable and the meta data sent with the upload may not be entirely available.
This concerns FTP for instance.
What is URL protocol? Microsoft Windows supports an abstract
protocol layer API which allows the construction of components that process
custom or specific URL and isolates the consumer application from the nature
of the protocol/media over which the data is actually received/sent. Examples:
the http handler supports the HTTP transfers over TCP/IP which is something
everyone would expect, but Microsoft includes with Windows a protocol called
mk: which behaves just like HTTP from the consumer's point of view (browser's
point of view) but serves data from a local HTML help file and not from an WEB
site. More advanced solutions such as ALP do even more - they behave again
like HTTP but they process the request locally, execute CGI or ASP pages
locally as like as they are a WEB server, but all this is done without any use
of a network (i.e. such protocols simulate WEB server behavior inside the
consumer process). There are various implementations from different vendors
and some of them can be quite useful, a simple example based on well-known
tools would be putting a Active Label ActiveX in a Windows HTML help file which
with a little Javascript can act just like Widnows application.
The URL protocols are more often distinguished from each other by the
protocol scheme which is the keyword before the first ":" (colon)
character in the URL. For examle:
http://myserver/something - is an HTTP URL
alp://C:/somedir/default.asp - is an ALP URL
ftp://someserver/directory - is an FTP url
mk:C:\somedir\\somefile.chm::/htm/somefile.htm - is a HTML help URL
Common usages of URL protocols - simulation of network functionality on the
local machine (pseudo servers etc.), filtering of online content, custom
encryption and/or custom transfer protocol with custom servers etc.
Printer compatibility
newObjects Active Label is compatible with any printer equipped with fully functional
printer driver for Windows. This covers virtually all the office printers
(Laser, Ink jet and dot matrix printers), almost all the thermal and transfer
label printers and many others. VisiLabel works with raster printers, it is
not compatible with plotters and other vector printing/drawing devices that
support only vector operations.
Because Active Label is primarily designed for customers interested in labels
we will put here links to some manufacturers of specialized label printers:
...
If you are a label printer manufacturer and your WEB site is not in the
list tell us.
Compatibility of the newObjects Active Label ActiveX with other applications and
development environments.
The Active Label ActiveX can be used with any development tool that supports
ActiveX hosting and enough features to allow control over its functions programmatically.
This includes Microsoft's Visual Basic, Visual Studio (incl. .NET), Delphi,
Internet Explorer, NSBasic and many others.
Active Label ActiveX is not intended, nor convenient for inclusion in document
oriented applications (typical office applications such as MS Word for
instance). We have a separate Barcode ActiveX that can be used to mark
documents with barcodes, put on forms, in report generators and so on. It has
minimal size and memory footprint.
Technical requirements for developer license
If you plan to use Active Label ActiveX in Windows application (written in C,
VB, .NET, Delphi or other language/tool capable of producing Windows
applications) you need a license which will permit royalty free redistribution
of the application with the ActiveX used in it (see more details about the
licensing policy on the pricing and license types page). To use such a license
your application must:
- Have own executable (EXE) file.
- Version information in the exe file, which includes at least your
company name and the product name.
- A string resource entry with the license key.
This means that you must be able to control the Windows resources in your
main executable file. In some RAD environments the resources are generated
automatically and you may need to consult their documentation to see how to
add a resource manually. This is generally possible in all the development
environments that produce executables. If you are not sure contact us - if we
do not know already the development tool you use we will test it and find out
how to do it.
