Forms are an essential part of many business or administration processes: Tax declarations, travel expense reports or an annual budget request. They offer a simple means of structuring data entered by an end user.

More and more frequently nowadays, companies and governments are using the Internet to deploy web-based applications and services. Forms are published on the Internet, thus making them available for download to potential applicants.

An ASP.NET 2.0 sample implementation of The Imaging Source illustrates how to display a document in the browser, without any plug-ins, such as Acrobat Reader or an MS Word viewer. In this web-based application, TX Text Control .NET Server is used as the central document engine to create images from single pages of the document. These optimized images are displayed in the browser, thus enabling the end user to see a preview of the document.

Responsive interfaces with AJAX

AJAX technology (shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) enables developers to create more interactive web interfaces. Web pages deploying AJAX feel more responsive, as the entire page does not have to be completely reloaded with every interaction. This sample application uses AJAX to provide the user a rich featured document viewer.

The end user is able to open a specific document from a list of files. After opening a document, s/he can browse through all pages at varying zoom levels. Additionally, it is possible to search within the current page. The search results are highlighted in yellow throughout the document. The complete document can be downloaded as an Adobe PDF file, an MS Word, or RTF document.

Technically, TX Text Control .NET Server is getting a request from the client via AJAX JavaScript. It creates an image of the current page and returns the image path and some additional information, such as the total number of pages of the selected document. Thanks to AJAX, this data can be updated on-the-fly, without having to reload the complete HTML page. The AJAX technology enables this kind of interface and makes this document viewer really usable.

This document viewer is another sample that illustrates the flexibility of TX Text Control .NET Server. It can be used as a core component in all kind of word processing processes. TX Text Control .NET Server can be used to create images from the document pages, to convert documents or to create complete forms server-side.

Find a out more about the AJAX Document Viewer here.