Black On Stuff

A few days ago we’ve made public a new tool to customize the Backup CD sold with the software products. Since it’s an important option, we’ve released also a press release, going out yesterday. In the hours after the press release, we have received some questions about what it does and how it works (so it seems that the message is too marketing oriented in the document for the press).

So here is more technical information: until now, every disc that was processed had a customizable face in terms of graphical design and no other custom information. Now, the customer name, product name(s) and license codes can be dynamically written on a disc, independent of the graphical layout. For this to happen we needed to know the exact position on the disc where those elements will be printed. There were two options here: make the publisher calculate the x and y of the elements and then send it to us or set it in an interface or make a nice tool where you can drag and drop the elements, play with the font size and color, see a preview of how the final work will look, adjust again the settings and then save it.

The first option was not really an option for us, because of the errors and extra work might introduce for both the software publisher and Avangate. So we went with the second choice. The tool makes the process of adding custom elements to a CD a breeze. It is using extensive html and Ajax to make it as close to a desktop application as possible. It has the benefit that what you see is what you get. It even has a flash demo on how to use it, in simple steps and with comments.

Major benefit: extra-rapid CD face setup.

Only one “drawback”: the tool will be used only once, when the CD is set up. If the CD face is not changed for a long period of time, then the editing tool is not needed. So this is not a day-by-day tool, but more like a one-time tool. But it will leave any one of us more free time, time to post a new topic in the blog