Chapter 1. Overview

Welcome to Morovia Barcode ActiveX! Morovia Barcode ActiveX empowers developers to quickly build comprehensive Windows-based barcode applications. Using Morovia Barcode ActiveX, you can add barcode printing functionality to an existing application in just a couple of hours.

You can use Morovia Barcode ActiveX to build applications for both large corporations and small businesses. Typical applications include:

  • Retail Packaging

  • Shipping

  • Labeling Software

  • Order Tracking

  • Banking

  • Postal Applications

  • Inventory Control

  • Asset Tracking

  • Tool Tracking

  • Document Tracking

Morovia Barcode ActiveX product line comes with two versions - the lite version and the pro version. The difference lies in the barcode formats that they support. The lite version supports linear barcode formats, including Code 39, UPC-A, UPC-E, EAN-13, EAN-8, Code 93, Code128, UCC/EAN-128, Codabar, POSTNET, Royal Mail, HIBC Interleaved 2 of 5, GS1 DataBar, GS1 DataBar Truncated, GS1 DataBar Limited, GS1 DataBar Stacked and GS1 DataBar Stacked Omnidirectional. The professional version supports all barcode formats listed above plus three two dimensional formats - PDF417, Data matrix and MaxiCode, plus DataBar Expanded and DataBar Expanded Stacked.

Unlike other products that create low quality bitmaps, Morovia Barcode ActiveX draws itself using high-resolution metafile graphics that are device-independent [1] and adapt to printing devices supported by Windows. The control also exports to a variety of graphics formats including BMP, JPEG, GIF, PNG, TIF, WMF and EMF.

The Barcode ActiveX provides methods to save itself into a file in binary or XML text format. With XML, data can be easily exchanged among computers. For example, you can store all the properties in a database, transmit them over Internet, and load at a later time.

Best of all, this component does not have any dependencies on Windows 2000 and above. Only one file needs to be included with your installation package. If you are using the lite version, the file is called MrvBarLt.dll. For the pro version, the file is MrvBarCd.dll. There are no run time dependencies or additional files to be included.

Barcode ActiveX control can be used in a variety of ways. In this manual we explain how to use the component in Microsoft Office programs, Access, Internet Explorer, IIS as well as major programming environment such as Visual Basic and Visual C++.

Version 4 includes both 32-bit and 64-bit binaries. The interfaces remain the same as the previous version 3.


[1] Special handling is required for working with low-resolution devices to produce high-quality barcodes.