About the tutorial

The examples in the tutorial are related to each other - each example extends the previous. However they do not represent a straight line. In some cases it is more important to show "what else" can be done and the good and the weak sides of certain techniques. For example a lot of work can be saved if the label is defined with parameters in the <OBJECT> tag, but this approach has its limits and while it is ok in applications where single label design is used it becomes a burden once the application grows to support multiple designs and built-in interactive label editing features.

How to view the tutorial

VisiLabel ActiveX is a client side control, but it is designed to be a part of WEB based applications. If we want to show the entire picture It is not enough to show only the client side techniques, but also the cooperation between the server side and the client-side. This makes it important to include some server-side code in the examples.

In your applications you can use whatever WEB server programming technology you prefer - ASP, JSP, PHP, CGI etc. We decided to use classic ASP in the examples because of two reasons: First because it is easier to understand even for developers who does not use it. And second, because ASP can be run without significant efforts even on the workstation machines where the tutorial is most likely to be used.

The examples in the tutorial are implemented in static HTML pages as far as possible and have links to the pages with server side code. So a big part of the tutorial can be viewed without need of a server, still if you want to see everything in action we recommend you one of these two ways to do so:

1. You can install PWS (Personal WEB server) on your machine or use PWS or IIS on a machine at hand. Copy the entire tutorial directory tree into a virtual directory on the WEB server and navigate to the start.htm page with Microsoft Internet Explorer.

2. You can download and install Active Local Pages (ALP) and then open the tutorial. ALP runs ASP code on the client side making the Internet Explorer both server and client. In other words the ASP pages will work in-place without need to deploy them on a WEB server. 

Notes about IIS/PWS. You may need to define a MIME type for the .visilabel file extension. Some of the latest versions of the Microsoft WEB server deny the unknown file types for security reasons. If you receive empty labels somewhere or 404 errors. Define a MIME type "application/nw-visilabel" for the .visilabel file extension in the WEB server's MIME map. Also check that the database files (the MDB files) from the examples can be written - check the file permissions.

List of the examples in the tutorial

Step 1. Embed the VisiLabel ActiveX and show a label in it (for instance the label can be designed with VisiLabel Viewer Express). Learn about the potential problems with the Internet Explorer security settings and adjust them.

Step 2. Embed the ActiveX and define the label using parameters in the HTML page instead of loading it from an separate file.

Step 3. Move one step further and use a little server-side code to generate/alter the label shown on the page. Using parameters the ASP page generates different labels.

Step 4. Use the technique from Step 3 for something more useful. A little server-side code passes some data with the label and allows a set of labels to be printed over it. The data is obtained from a simple database on the server.

Step 5. Do almost the same as in step 4 but this time generate the label and its data with separate ASP page in manner better suitable for a growing application.

Step 6. See how to create a fragment of an WEB application that is capable of showing different labels selected by the user (in the example). In an real-world application the labels would be most likely selected to match the item processed on that page. E.g. the application may have different labels for different items...

Step 7.  Make use of the interactive editing capabilities. Create a simple label editor and save the labels in the WEB application's database. Such pages would be most likely part of the administrative area of the WEB applications. The end-operators most often need only viewing and printing features, but the administrators must be able to prepare the labels for them - which is the topic of this example.

Out of the line

Step X. An example for a specific situation. Assume this is a page the operator sees. In the most cases the operator will only print the label, but there is a problem - the operator must add an image from the local machine to some labels. So, give the operator very limited means to change the label.

Step Y. The operator is to be allowed to edit the label and change/remove some elements on it manually. This example is most likely a representation of a non-typical situation which nevertheless often occurs no matter the word "untypical". Building a system for the organization/company is rarely a single step task. Thus very often there are periods in which some of the functionality is not yet fully implemented and you need to provide means to do the job while this is done. For example the database and the corresponding application's parts may need more work and there is not enough data to generate the labels from it - so give the operator ability to put some things manually.