What is in the download package.

In fact you download the same package no matter which one you choose - Active Label Browser or Active Label ActiveX. The difference is made by what you will use and license the Active Label Browser application or the ActiveX.

In the package you will find a set of example labels (a shortcut to them is installed in the start menu group: Programs -> newObjects -> Active Label). Also there is a simple WEB based online label repository which you can install on an intranet server or workstation with IIS or PWS (some IIS/PWS management skills may be required).

If you are a developer or you have software developers in your company they may be interested in the other examples (mostly oriented to the usage of the Active Label ActiveX). The simple repository can be used as a reference point for building a custom repository more suitable for your specific needs. Any average WEB developer will be able to understand the code and possibly build something more suitable for your specific needs if the need is there.

If your company/organization has more developed IT infrastructure with specialized business software or you plan such we strongly recommend you evaluate both Active Label Browser and Active Label ActiveX and see which one will be better for your current and prospective needs. Note that the license for the Active Label ActiveX includes the Active Label Browser as well and is more cost effective for a bigger number of workstations.

Try before buy

You can try the Active Label Browser before buying it. The full functionality is available in demo mode. A "demo version" text is displayed and printed on each label and the location of the text will vary. This should not be a problem for testing with barcode scanners.

What is important to know when using and testing barcodes

Except for some of the most popular standard barcode symbologies (such as the industry standard EAN13,UPCA,EAN8,CODE39,CODE128) many barcode symbologies have variations. Pay attention to the "check digits" settings as your barcode scanner may be configured to require a specific configuration for a particular symbology.

Furthermore note that the barcode scanners do not read all the barcodes by default, they usually need to be reconfigured to meet your needs. There are also code length limitations configured with the scanners. For example Interleaved 2 of 5 is most often restricted to exactly 14 digits (the reason has historical roots), but many companies are using this symbology for various applications and need different lengths - you will need to configure the scanner to support that.

If you are new to the barcodes we strongly recommend you reading some articles about them and begin the tests after consulting with the scanner's user manual.

Highlights

Active Label Browser can rotate the barcodes to allow you put them the best way on the particular label.

Besides the barcodes Active Label supports other elements that you can use to design the labels.

You can put images on the labels. Active Label supports various formats, including: JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP, WMF and others. You can put images from the local drives or even directly from the Internet/intranet. It is even possible to put images contained in file resources and other untypical medias if they support an URL protocol for extraction (for example using res: protocol you can refer a bitmap from the resources of an EXE file). The images are managed in manner very similar to a WEB browser.

 
click for full size image

You can apply a number of effects and transformations over the pictures on the label. They will apply each time the image is reloaded - thus the original is not changed, but you can save or upload the edited images directly from within the browser. When you are printing labels from a database you may have different but similar in characteristics images for each label that will print - e.g. the image URL is a field in the database. You can set the effects and transformations and then when printing they will be applied to each image before actually printing it.

Database connectivity. We simply use ADO inside the browser, thus any database for which you can create an ODBC alias, OLEDB connection string can be used. This includes virtually all the databases and database servers you may use. The internal data source acts as mediator between the actual data and the elements on the label. You can connect each property of each graphical element to a field in the dataset - not only the textual values or the barcode values. This allows you implement some tricky solutions such as small changes in the label design depending on the data in each record extracted from the database. For example you can hide an element and show another if in response to the values of certain fields.

Browsing. You can try this after installing the Active Label Browser - Click "Labels online" (the second button from the right on the Navigation toolbar).

This leads you to a little online site made entirely of Active Labels with hyperlinks. What's the use? No matter if the labels are important in your work or side non-frequent tasks you may need to organize the labels somehow. Very often there could be need different employees to work with the same resources, so by using a few labels in WEB page like manner you can direct the users to right label for each case. This is good for a shared directory for example, but more can be done. As the Active Label can download resources from anywhere you can put the simple repository packed with it on a WEB server at hand (usually an intranet server in your work area/office). If that is not enough a more sophisticated repository can be built and browsed with Active Label Browser. The efforts? Almost any WEB programming technology will do, to build a site or a WEB application for Active Label is the same as building a WEB site. The only difference is that instead of HTML pages you place or generate Active Labels. While the purpose of such a site or application is very narrow and the labels can be kept in text files there wont be need of huge complicated code. Of course, this is an opportunity for those who need it, there is no need to use these features if you are using the application occasionally with a few very well known label designs.