Hello, Simply put , if you're looking for a (very) easy way to integrate Scanning into a web application for FREE!, you're finally here. Enjoy!
Just like many developers and integrators out there; we were looking for a FREE way to integrate scanning into many of our web based applications for several reasons. As we grew deseperate of finding a free solution that actually works the way we wanted, we've decided not only to develop one but also to allow fellow developers to enjoy it as much as we do..
The problem
Scanners and Web pages DO NOT talk well. First of all, scanners' interfaces are platform dependent. on Win32 (windows) scanners are wrapped as a special set of APIs(application programmer interface) that are, unfortunately, unaccessible through simple scripting. These set of APIs are collectively called TWAIN (technology without an interesting name, Really)
Secondly, as a special requirement uploading scanned images should be as transparent as possible. for security reasons, access to scanned files, just as well as other files on client machine is strictly prohibited by browser security.
Although this is favourable in many circumstances, just like many we just felt that things could be made alot simpler for the benefit of both Developers (us) and users (us as well) .
The Solution
Short answer is TwainX :). The idea is like many problems in the computer world, the theorem goes, all problems in computer science can be solved by adding a layer of indirection. in TwainX it's just like that; an API scriptable Wrapper (ActiveX, that is).
Scanner interface is wrapped as a scriptable object that developers can download and host on their web sites, have a few lines of code embedded in their pages where they wish to integrate scanning and ..., well that is it. you should have a very decent set of scanner controlling features available to you.
Does it fit anywhere? the answer is certainly, not, your pages with scanning support will become browser dependent, for the time-being we only support Internet Explorer being our client only browser, please don't think we don't share your passion about other browsers because we defintitely do, and we wish to support more as we go, namely firefox, but better some than non.