Displaying multi-page documents in a zero-footprint web application can be a challenge because of the limitations associated with the <img> tag, which can only display a single image. A common solution is to implement a separate thumbnail viewer and attach JavaScript listener events to change the displayed image in your main "viewer." A more advanced solution may involve detecting the scroll position and modifying the DOM to create a continuously scrolling viewer. Those are both great for any file with multiple pages, but what if you want to take full advantage of more advanced file format features such as PDF bookmarks and hyperlinks?

Many applications don't bother supporting the PDF file format and assume you want to use a third party plug-in to display it. However, the LEADTOOLS HTML5 SDK includes support for not only rasterizing the PDF into an image, but also reading the text, hyperlinks and embedded thumbnails so that you can develop a fully-featured, zero-footprint PDF viewer application! Our engineers are very proud of this functionality and have created the HTML5 PDF Thumbnails and Bookmarks demo so you can see the amazing technology LEADTOOLS has to offer. Additionally, it gives you a huge head start on developing your application since the source code for this demo (and all of our other HTML5 demos) is included with the free, fully-functional LEADTOOLS Evaluation download

Some of you may have noticed already, but our web-based .NET documentation has gone through a major renovation and upgrade. Our documentation team has been collecting feedback and requests for a while and had a chance to start implementing the enhancements after Version 18 was completed. Some of it is cosmetic, but there are some pretty neat features and user interface updates that have greatly enhanced the webhelp. Here are a few of the major features added or enhanced in the new webhelp:

• New toolbar and TOC (Table of Contents) with larger, modern icons
• Visually pleasing keyword indexes
• Embedded chat page to facilitate communication with Support
• New search options
• Smarter and more efficient TOC
  • Dynamically generated TOC increases speed and navigability
  • Persistent state remembers which branches you have opened
  • Sync button highlights where your current article is located in the TOC

• Always visible direct link to the currently displayed article for easy sharing and bookmarking
• New option to email link to the current page
• Ability to show and hide the webframe
• New icons that show which platforms are supported by a function, property or event

We hope you find the documentation more thorough and easier to navigate, giving you more time where you need it most: in your code. As always, if there are any more features you would like to see, let us know!

LEADTOOLS Version 18, also known as LEADTOOLS Anywhere™, is designed with the purpose of opening new opportunities and easing the development of high quality imaging applications that can run anywhere. Since V18's release earlier this year, we have published several articles on The CodeProject showing the benefits of using LEADTOOLS to create multi-platform, native apps for .NET, WinRT, iOS, OS X and Android.

This month we are continuing that series and have written an article showing the beauty and simplicity of using LEADTOOLS Anywhere™ for barcode recognition. For each platform, it only requires a few simple lines of code to detect and recognize barcodes from still images and video streams. Head on over to The CodeProject, grab the latest evaluation for LEADTOOLS V18 and see for yourself how LEADTOOLS Anywhere™ can increase your mobile app's ROI.

Annotation and Markup has been a staple feature in LEADTOOLS Document Imaging SDKs for almost two decades. Over the years it has undergone several transformations, some cosmetic and some structural. LEADTOOLS Annotations, which started as a CDLL API, were also ported to new technologies as they came along: C++ Classes, .NET, WPF, Silverlight, HTML5 and more. Not only did we add new interfaces with the release of LEADTOOLS Anywhere™ in Version 18, but the Annotations library took on another big change that will not only future-proof the library, but also make cross-platform application development a breeze.

Compared to our current offering, the new annotations design and format in LEADTOOLS V18 most closely resembles the .NET interface. Developers using .NET, WPF, Silverlight, HTML5/JavaScript, WinRT, iOS, OS X and Android now share identical libraries. On top of the uniform programming interface design, the annotation file format which LEADTOOLS loads and saves has been standardized as well, allowing annotations to be loaded and saved in any LEADTOOLS application, regardless of its development platform.

We are very excited about the release of LEADTOOLS Anywhere™, and we've been inviting everyone to take advantage of our powerful multi-platform imaging technology by publishing free apps for WinRT, Android and today, iOS. Just like the WinRT and Android apps, these applications were fully approved for the App Store, and the source code for each of these demos is available in the main LEADTOOLS evaluation to help get developers started on their LEADTOOLS Anywhere™ projects.

• LEADTOOLS Image Processing
• LEADTOOLS OCR
• LEADTOOLS Barcode
• LEADTOOLS Medical Web Viewer

Now that LEADTOOLS Anywhere™ has successfully run the gauntlet for each app market for Windows, Android and Apple, developers using LEADTOOLS can rest easy knowing that one of the most crucial steps in their application development life-cycle has already been proven feasible, which is something not every third party SDK can guarantee.