The easiest way to use my scanners directly from browsers- Dynamic Web TWAIN review

1.How can I use the same application for all of my scanners?

I myself used to have several different scanners (HP Scanjet 5590, Canon LiDE 110, SamSung SCX-4521F, etc). Although they all use TWAIN, they have different interfaces. I even need to install some software just to use one of the scanners (such as SmarThru for the SamSung Scanner). Getting used to all the different interfaces was really tiresome for me and for my customers. So I really wanted to find one uniform interface which would allow me to use all of my scanners and I came across Dynamic Web TWAIN. And what a pleasant surprise!! The Dynamic Web TWAIN ActiveX can be used to make a customized scanning interface as a Web Page!! After researching a little into the online help document, I succeeded in making my first Dynamic Web TWAIN app with the 30-day free trial. You might NEVER know how easy it can be:

Yes, you’re right, that’s all the code I needed to use ALL of my scanners attached on my computer to scan!!! And by writing code like “objScan.Resolution = 100;”, I easily succeeded in changing the resolution for scanning!! Below is how my first app looked like:

2. What if the scanning is not perfect?

Scanning is not an easy task. Very often I found myself scanning documents upside-down or askew. What then? Scan again? What if I scanned unnecessary margins of the page?

Again Dynamic Web TWAIN came to my rescue: I could edit the images in the viewer directly!!!

By simply adding a button I could turn my upside-down page back to normal:

function btnRotate_onclick() { objScan.RotateRight(objScan.CurrentImageIndexInBuffer); }

And yes, I found many more editing methods are available: http://www.dynamsoft.com/help/TWAIN/WebTwain/Methods%20main.htm

On the Dynamsoft Site, I found all the editing methods I needed on their great demo page:

http://www.dynamsoft.com/demo/DWT5/online_demo_scan.aspx

What’s even better? Dynamic Web TWAIN has a built-in editor that you can call directly on the page!!

3. How can I archive my scanned pages?

I still remember the old days when my customers would scan documents on their side and send the images to me via email. I would download the images, check the images and put them in different folders accordingly! I wasted a lot of my good work time doing this and I hated doing this!!! Communication via web is a good way, and again Dynamic Web TWAIN has saved me a good deal of time with its built-in upload methods. Here is how easy it gets to upload all the scanned images as a multi-page PDF to my server:

function btnUpload_onclick() { objScan. HTTPUploadAllThroughPostAsPDF (“localhost”, “/actionpage.aspx”,”test.pdf”); }

4. IE isn’t that great, many of my customers don’t use IE for browsing. What then?

I have customers who don’t like IE at all. I myself is a big fan of Firefox and does most of my surfing on Firefox. So naturally I found myself wanting to scan in my Firefox. And Dynamic Web TWAIN surprised me again for their Wide browser-support. Besides IE and Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, Opera are also supported. Now I don’t need to worry what browser my users use because my application can handle all!!!

5. What if I need more functionalities and I don’t like programming?

Dynamic Web TWAIN has more than 100 methods, more than 110 properties and 16 events. It’s so powerful that I could always find the functionality I needed. But sometimes I only had the idea of what I wanted to do but didn’t want to use too much time finding the right methods. That’s when I experienced the fast, patient and thoughtful technical support from the Dynamsoft team. I got what I wanted fast and easily whether through email, livehelp or phone call. The team always seemed to know what I needed and they would send me working samples which could be used directly in my app!!

And I found a good way to make my own customized version of web scanning model by changing few lines of the online demo code which can be easily downloaded from Dynamsoft site: http://www.dynamsoft.com/demo/DWT5/online_demo_scan.aspx

http://www.dynamsoft.com/download/Support/DWT/DWTDemoCode.zip

I like programming and I spent some time making my own app. But what if you are not a developer and don’t want to write a line? Haha, Dynamsoft even provides a Virtual Developer Service that can make a customized app specialized for your needs!! Isn’t this awesome?

The team of Dynamsoft sure has done a great job providing us with the great tool Dynamic Web TWAIN. And they are still improving the product according to our needs. The latest great news would be that Mac Web TWAIN was to be released later this year!!! Soon my customers can enjoy the efficiency of Dynamic Web TWAIN no matter they are using PC or Mac!!!!^_^

Tom is using a TWAIN scanning solution from Dynamsoft.

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