Barcode scanner research

Mark Szota has informed us that he wants the system to be as efficient as possible, so I have been assigned the responsibility to research bar-code scanners as a potential data input interface for staff.

During my research I discovered that nowadays bar-code scanners give the computer the same kind of data as keyboards, so we don't need any special drivers or libraries to integrate them into a system - even a web based system.

The most basic way to use bar-code scanners is to enter data into a form. The user would click an input text box with their mouse, scan a bar-code, then click another text input box, and scan another bar-code. We can do better than that of course. A more user-friendly method is to print a unique character combination at the start of each bar-code. The system could then listen out for this character combination, and know when it heard it that this input was coming from the bar-code scanner, not the keyboard. The system could then select the appropriate input text boxes on the form automatically, eliminating the need for a mouse.