Release notes
Dated list of what changed in the generator and why — new symbologies, label layouts and fixes, written for people who use the site rather than for developers.
This is the log of what changed on the site, written for the people who use it rather than for whoever maintains it. Anything that alters what the generator produces — a new symbology, a new label layout, a fix to how a code is drawn — is written down here with a date, because a barcode tool that changes silently is a barcode tool you cannot trust with a print run. Entries appear on the day they take effect, so a run of dates with gaps in it means exactly what it looks like: nothing worth reporting happened in between.
Bulk runs now show the labels before you download them
The bulk page could already tell you that row five was wrong and which check digit it needed, but it could not show you a single barcode: the first time you saw what the sheet actually contained was after opening the PDF. It now draws the codes as you paste, from exactly the data that goes into the file, so a check digit we worked out for you is on screen before you spend any label stock. Code 39 also stopped changing your text quietly — it has no lowercase letters, and when we shift a value to capitals we now say so instead of printing something you did not type.
The QR encoder is checked by reading the codes, not by looking at them
A QR code that is drawn wrongly still looks perfectly convincing: right size, right corner squares, sensible-looking speckle. Three separate mistakes in our encoder did exactly that, and each was found only by handing the finished image to an outside decoder and asking what it read. The build now checks 134 combinations of length and error-correction level that way, from a one-character code up to the 666-byte maximum, and every one of them has to come back with the text that went in.
The site opens with five symbologies and three ways out
The generator handles EAN-13, UPC-A, Code 128, Code 39 and QR, and every one of them ends in a file you can actually use: a PNG, a vector SVG, or a PDF sheet laid out for Avery label stock. Everything runs inside the page, so the value you type never reaches our server. There is no account and no watermark, and there is not going to be one — the site is paid for by advertising rather than by putting the download behind a form.
Does a change here affect labels you already printed?
No. A printed barcode is finished the moment it leaves the printer: nothing about it points back at this site, so nothing we change can reach it. Codes already on your shelves keep scanning exactly as they did. What a change does affect is the next file you download — so if an entry above describes something that matters to you, generate a fresh code rather than reusing the one in your downloads folder from last month. The one thing worth re-checking after any entry about drawing or layout is a single printed label, scanned with the device that will actually be reading it.