Release Notes

1.6.1 - 2024-12-16

Added

• Added maskColor configuration option to de-emphasize the area around the viewfinder rectangle. Using dark, semi-transparent color like rgba(0,0,0,0.5) works best to keep the user focused on region of interest.

• Added configuration options viewfinderBorderWidth and viewfinderCornerRadius for styling the viewfinder rectangle.

1.6.0 - 2024-11-25

Added

• Added PopupScanner, an out-of-the-box, modal scanning dialog with minimal customization options, drastically simplifying SDK usage for simple barcode scanning use cases. You can now scan barcodes with a single call to PopupScanner.scan() – building a scanner UI and managing the BarcodeReader is done for you.

• Added localized error messages for Japanese, Chinese, Hindi, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Thai, Korean, Portuguese, Dutch, Belgian, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and Finnish.

Changed

• We now use the widely available Web Audio API for audible feedback. For now, we are using it to play the existing beep sound. Going forward, the Web Audio API will allow flexible customization of the sound played on scans.

1.5.5 - 2024-11-04

Fixed

• QR Codes that use “Mirror Imaging” feature (ISO/IEC 18004:2015, section 6.2) and have their rows/columns transposed are now supported.

• QR Codes were erroneously reported as having a symbology identifier of ]Q0 (Model 1 QR Codes) instead of ]Q1.

1.5.4 - 2024-10-09

Fixed

• Fixed an issue in Safari on iOS 18 that prevents the flashlight from being turned off after it has been turned on.

1.5.3 - 2024-10-07

Added

• Support optional Modulo 43 checksum for the Code 39 symbology. Setting the new symbology parameter checksumMode to 1 (validate) or 2 (validate and transmit) will expect a check digit. Please note that setting the parameter to 1 or 2 will lead to Code 39 barcodes that lack a valid check digit to be no longer readable.

• Support optional Modulo 16 checksum for the Codabar symbology. Please refer to the new checksumMode symbology parameter for details.

Fixed

• Removed overly aggressive pruning of candidates introduced in 1.5.2 that caused performance regressions in certain scenarios.

1.5.2 - 2024-09-18

Added

• Add a utility method StrichSDK.getCameraPermissionState() that returns the current state of the camera permission: granted, denied, prompt or unknown. It relies on the Permissions API which is supported by all major browsers except Firefox. Invoking the method on a browser that does not support the Permissions API will return unknown.

Changed

• If all symbologies are enabled by omitting or specifying an empty symbologies array in the configuration, an error message is now logged to the browser console using WARN log level. Previously this was logged by the WebAssembly engine and logged using the normal log level. This change has no impact on customers, and we maintain that logging this state as a warning makes sense, as it indicates a misconfiguration of the SDK.

Fixed

• Further decreased EAN/UPC barcode misread rates by performing additional checks on the barcode structure.

• Fixed lower recognition rates due to too aggressive quiet zone checks.

• Some error messages that were created due to malformed JSON configuration were not propagated from the WebAssembly engine to the detailMessage of the SdkError.

• Fixed a rare issue where initializing a BarcodeReader with a bad JSON configuration prevented further attempts at initializing it with a correct one.

1.5.1 - 2024-08-26

Added

• It is now possible to set the minimum size of the quiet zone for 1D symbologies, using the qz symbology parameter. There should rarely be a need to change this parameter, but especially for symbologies with weak checksums, it can make sense to use a more strict value.

Fixed

• Fixed frequent short scans for Codabar symbology because of insufficient quiet zone check.

1.5.0 - 2024-08-22

This is a major release with extensive under-the-hood improvements. No changes to existing configurations are necessary.

Added

• Improved read rates for the most popular 1D symbologies EAN/UPC and Code 128 across several benchmarks.

• Added ink spread compensation to EAN/UPC decoder, allowing the decoder to better decode barcodes where the ink has degraded to the point where bar widths are too narrow, making the barcode non-conformant with regard to the ISO specifications. No configuration change is necessary to take advantage of this feature.

• Added ISO/IEC 15424 symbology identifier to barcode detections. This is primarily useful for identifying GS1 payloads.

• Improved detection rectangle for 1D barcode detections.

Changed

• Completely reworked core barcode segmentation and 1D barcode decoding logic, laying the groundwork for future features like multiple code detection and Augmented Reality (AR) mode. No changes to configuration are necessary.

Fixed

• Decreased misread ratio for EAN/UPC barcodes. Versions prior to 1.5 sometimes misread EAN/UPC barcodes.

• Fixed misplaced detection rectangle for PDF417 barcodes read in reverse orientation (visual-only).

• Increased read rates for QR codes at high resolutions.

Removed

• Removed support for 2-digit and 5-digit EAN/UPC supplements. While refactoring the 1D core, we decided to remove this seldomly-used feature. Please contact us if you require this capability.

• Removed support for WebGL1 in favor of WebGL2 which has been widely available for some time now (https://www.khronos.org/blog/webgl-2-achieves-pervasive-support-from-all-major-web-browsers). Setting the impl property in the locator configuration to webgl1 no longer has an effect. Devices that do not support WebGL 2 will continue working, but will skip a preprocessing step which will have a negative impact on code recognition.

• Removed an unnecessary check for WebAssembly SIMD support. SIMD support is planned for the next major release.

• Removed numScanlines property from engine configuration. The engine now automatically determines an appropriate number of scanlines depending on the context.

1.4.9 - 2024-07-26

Deprecated

• This is the last release to retain compatibility with WebGL 1. Future releases will require WebGL 2, which has been widely available for several years now.

Fixed

• Decreased WASM size by using more space-efficient lookup tables in the PDF417 decoder.

• Decreased bundle size by not including some code that was only used for internal debugging purposes.

• Clarified documentation regarding availability of the customLogoSrc overlay configuration property.

1.4.8 - 2024-06-19

Fixed

• Fixed a memory leak in the WebAssembly engine when running in debug mode.

Changed

• Request a smaller initial memory allocation for the WebAssembly engine (32MB instead of 64MB) to ease memory pressure on iOS. Safari currently has an open issue with WASM memory management that leads to 'Out of Memory' error in StrichSDK.initialize() and persists across reloads so can only be recovered from by closing and reopening the browser tab. The associated WebKit issue is: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=222097

1.4.7 - 2024-06-03

Added

• Slightly improved PDF417 recognition rate for dense codes.

Fixed

• Fixed an issue where the number of unique devices reported to the Customer Portal was incorrect. Existing devices were being counted multiple times. The number of scans was not affected.

• Gracefully handle the edge case where the device ID returned in the video track can not be found in the enumerated devices instead of throwing an internal error with detail message Video track device not found in enumerated devices. This state shouldn't be possible, but has been observed on Safari iOS in PWA mode.

1.4.6 - 2024-04-04

Added

• Flashlight capability is now available on iOS, as newer versions of Safari apparently support it.

Fixed

• Improved camera reliability on iOS, Safari 17.4 spuriously loses the camera stream, and we were unable to recover from this event in all situations.

• Fixed symbologies sometimes being enabled even though they were not configured due to uninitialized memory.

1.4.5 - 2024-03-26

Fixed

• Fixed the BarcodeReader host element growing in vertical size in certain layout situations. A ResizeObserver was registered on the host element and caused an endless loop. The element hosting the camera stream will now no longer adapt automatically to size changes of the host element.

Changed

• If an error occurs in the constructor of BarcodeReader, the thrown error will now include the detailMessage in its message property, making it easier to identify problems during integration. Previously message contained only an opaque error message (The supplied configuration is not valid) which was not helpful in debugging issues such as the host element not using relative positioning.

1.4.4 - 2024-03-04

Added

• Added a non-modular build flavor strich-noesm.js that uses an IIFE and exposes the SDK through a global strich object. This flavor is only recommended for scenarios where ES6 modules (import/export) are not supported.

Changed

• Switched our underlying build infrastructure to use esbuild instead of Parcel. If you experience issues in your build environment when upgrading to this release, please let us know.

Fixed

• Handle camera track muting: when the browser decides to mute the camera video track, display an error and offer to re-acquire the camera. This addresses in an issue in iOS 17.4 Beta versions where client-side navigation in SPAs triggers causes Safari to mute the track (https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=269846) and allows to recover from this state manually.

• Calling BarcodeReader.start() on an already started BarcodeReader instance no longer causes performance warnings in the browser console on Chrome, and is now simply ignored.

• Absolute image URLs are now supported for overlay logo customization (Enterprise-only). The hosting server must be configured to support cross-origin resource sharing (CORS).

1.4.3 - 2024-02-12

Changed

• The default camera on iPhones with multiple back-facing cameras (e.g. iPhone 15 Pro) is now the Back Dual Wide Camera. Previously, the Back Camera was selected, which resulted in bad scanning performance due to the camera being out of focus.

1.4.2 - 2024-02-05

Added

• Allow overriding camera selection by providing a constraints object in the frame source configuration. This is an advanced option that should be used with care.

Fixed

• Significantly improved Data Matrix read rates where codes suffer from perspective warp (not viewed from above).

• GS1 QR codes with FNC1 in first position now no longer results in empty data.

1.4.1 - 2024-01-26

Fixed

• Improved Aztec Code detection rate for compact codes and improved accuracy of detection quadrilateral.

Changed

• Removed all console.error() invocations to avoid issues with automated testing systems checking for console error messages. Non-critical errors are reported via console.warn(), critical errors are propagated via SdkError and the displayed on the overlay.

1.4.0 - 2023-12-29

Fixed

• Fixed a performance issue that manifested itself on less powerful devices where the majority of processing time was spent on GPU->CPU buffer transfers, leading to up to 60% performance increase in some situations.

Changed

• BarcodeReader.destroy() now returns a Promise that resolves when the BarcodeReader and its resources are destroyed. The returned Promise is typically already resolved, unless destroy() is called while the BarcodeReader is being initialized, in which case the destruction happens after initialization completes. Previously, calling destroy() while initialize() was still pending caused a crash. Existing application code that calls destroy() does not need to be adapted.

Added

• Added basic overlay styling capabilities to overlay. The color of the viewfinder, camera selector control and flashlight icons can now be set via overlay configuration property primaryColor. The color of highlighted barcode detections can be set using highlightColor, and the cornerRadius property can be used to apply rounded corners to the viewfinder and camera selector control. The color of the targeting line when a linear barcode is detected can be set using targetingLineActiveColor. The defaults for all these properties match the previous hard-coded values, so if you are happy with the look & feel, you don't have to do anything.

• Added overlay configuration property filterCameras to control filtering of camera devices shown in camera selector. If set to true true (default), only back-facing camera devices are listed. If set to false, all camera devices available in the browser are listed.

• If a BarcodeReader could not be initialized due to missing browser capabilities like WebAssembly, WebGL or getUserMedia, mention the missing capability in the detailMessage property of the thrown SdkError.

• Report the detected code's location as a quadrilateral instead of an axis-aligned bounding box in the new quadrilateral property of the CodeDetection. The overlay will also use this more precise location for drawing the detections if drawDetections is enabled.

1.3.4 - 2023-11-28

Fixed

• Significantly improved Aztec Code recognition rates for full-range codes.

• Removed transmission of unused URL parts in license verification and usage tracking.

1.3.3 - 2023-11-07

Fixed

• Fixed an issue on iOS where camera access failed with a camera device is not compatible error message rememberCameraDeviceId was set to true and the user's device changed, leading to the remembered camera device id no longer being valid.

Changed

• Expose detail message when license check fails, providing potentially useful information on how to resolve the issue (e.g. URL not in scope).

Added

• Throw a dedicated error if the SDK is initialized in an insecure context (non-HTTPS, non-localhost). Previously this was reported in a confusing fashion (invalid license).

1.3.2 - 2023-10-26

Fixed

• Fixed an issue that led to offline-capable license keys being reported as expired.

1.3.1 - 2023-10-14

Added

• Added configuration option focusOnTap (default: true) to overlay configuration: this toggles the autofocus that occurs when tapping on the overlay. Previously focusing on tap was always enabled.

Changed

• Adapted license service calls in order to re-enable detailed usage stats in Customer Portal using Client Hints. No changes to existing Content Security Policies are necessary.

1.3.0 - 2023-09-20

Added

• New configuration option rememberCameraDeviceId in frame source configuration: if set to true, the SDK will remember the selected camera device after a successful scan, and attempt to re-acquire it when re-initialized. Default value is false.

• Support for PDF417 and Compact PDF417 symbologies is now available, the new symbology can be activated by specifying pdf417 in the symbologies array of the engine configuration. PDF417 barcodes can only be read in horizontal direction at the moment.

Changed

• Under the hood improvements and removal of legacy code.

1.2.2 - 2023-08-16

Added

• Extended support for inverted codes to 1D barcodes. Setting invertedCodes to true will now also cause inverted 1D barcodes to be read.

• New helper method StrichSDK.hasCameraDevice() to check for the existence and availability of a camera device.

1.2.1 - 2023-07-28

Added

• Raw code data is now exposed through the rawData property of the CodeDetection.

1.2.0 - 2023-07-12

Added

• The GPU-accelerated barcode locator is now based on WebGL 2, which is widely supported by now. If you are for some reason required to use WebGL 1, set the new impl field on the locator configuration to webgl1. WebGL 2 supports asynchronous reads which we use to decrease the load on the main thread. Some older Safari versions have reported issues using the asynchronous reads, which is why for the moment we have disabled asynchronous reads on iOS. This will likely change in the future.

Fixed

• Fixed a rare engine crash that resulted from incorrect error handling.

Changed

• Changed the default values for hysteresisMinCount to 2 and hysteresisInterval to 350. The previous defaults were causing EAN/UPC codes to be unreadable on low-end Android devices.

1.1.4 - 2023-06-26

Added

• User-facing error messages (e.g. "Access to camera not permitted") are now localized. English, Spanish, German, French and Italian are the currently supported languages, with more to come.

• Prepared support for iOS 17 Safari OffscreenCanvas+WebGL support. STRICH will utilize a GPU-accelerated OffscreenCanvas if the browser supports it.

Fixed

• Improved performance when scanning EAN/UPC codes with hysteresis enabled.

1.1.3 - 2023-06-07

Added

• Configurable min/max length for variable-length symbologies. Instead of just the name, specify an object with name, minLen and/or maxLen in the symbologies array. Example: symbologies: 'ean13', { name: 'code128', minLen: 8, maxLen: 12 }

Fixed

• Removed a stray console output statement that was meant for debugging purposes only.

1.1.2 - 2023-06-06

Fixed

• Improved error handling when encountering OverconstrainedError, especially on Firefox desktop. Special thanks to Jukka Aittokallio for reporting the issue.

1.1.1 - 2023-05-22

Added

• Added hysteresis for 1D barcodes with weak checksums (EAN/UPC symbologies) to decrease misreads. This feature improves reliability for EAN/UPC barcodes at the cost of slightly slower detection, and can be deactivated by setting the new hysteresisMinCount engine parameter to 0.

Fixed

• Fixed a memory violation in the Databar decoder, which would occasionally crash the engine.

1.1.0 - 2023-05-17

Added

• Added experimental support for EAN-2/EAN-5 supplements (new ean2 and ean5 symbology options). Note that this feature is experimental: supplemental symbologies will not be enabled if you enable all symbologies (which we do not recommend).

• Added an optional onError callback to the BarcodeReader instance.

1.0.9 - 2023-05-15

Fixed

• Fixed an issue where an error in the WebAssembly engine was misinterpreted, and wrong results where generated.

• Do not draw the red 'laser line' when a 2D symbology is scanned

1.0.8 - 2023-05-11

Added

• Not calling BarcodeReader.destroy() after no longer needing a BarcodeReader is a common cause of camera access errors. A warning is now logged to the browser console if a BarcodeReader is initialized when another instance remains that was not destroyed yet.

• If no regionOfInterest is specified in the configuration, an appropriately sized region will now be automatically selected based on the configured symbologies.

Fixed

• The horizontal targeting line in the scanning overlay was not being shown if all symbologies were enabled.

1.0.7 - 2023-05-06

Fixed

• When a BarcodeReader was used in standalone display mode on iOS (PWA, added to home screen), camera access was lost when the user unfocused the PWA. An error is now displayed in this case, along with a button to resume scanning.

Changed

• Clarified acceptable use of StrichSDK.setCustomId(), personally identifying data must not be sent.

1.0.6 - 2023-04-19

Fixed

• The combination of Enterprise offline license with analytics opt-in did not work, no usage data was sent.

1.0.5 - 2023-04-18

Fixed

• Deactivating audio feedback (beep) was not possible.

Added

• Log a warning to the browser console if an invalid resolution (e.g. 'qhd') is specified in the frame source configuration.

1.0.4 - 2023-03-30

Fixed

• Internal code change that addresses a "ReferenceError: Must call super constructor in derived class before accessing 'this' or returning from derived constructor" build error in older optimized Angular versions.

1.0.3 - 2023-03-30

Changed

• Not setting a duplicateInterval in the engine configuration will now lead to a default 750ms interval to be used.

Fixed

• Ensured compatibility with iOS 16.4, do not attempt to instantiate a WebGL context on an OffscreenCanvas.

1.0.2 - 2023-03-23

Added

• Activated custom logo on overlay feature (Enterprise-only).

Fixed

• Added missing fallback to medium precision on devices which do not support WebGL high precision floats.

1.0.1 - 2023-03-20

Fixed

• Gracefully handle the situation where MediaStream does not implement getCapabilities() (e.g. Firefox Android).

• Avoid spurious exception after BarcodeReader.destroy() from an asynchronous overlay update in destroyed state

• Aztec code detection rectangle was not displayed on overlay for some non-compact Aztec codes.

1.0.0 - 2023-03-15

This is the first public release. A special thank you to all pilot users for getting us here!

Added

• Log engine version on initialization.

0.9.11 - 2023-03-13

Fixed

• Fixed memory access violations which manifested quickly when all symbologies are activated

0.9.10 - 2023-03-10

Changed

• Force WebGL context loss when destroying WebGL resources, avoiding warning messages when too many WebGL contexts are allocated.

Fixed

• BarcodeReader.destroy() did not destroy all engine resources, leading to intermittent crashes on iOS Safari

0.9.9 - 2023-03-10

Fixed

• BarcodeReader.destroy() now properly removes all elements added to the host element

• Respect analyticsOptOut: false for offline-capable licenses that still want usage data

0.9.8 - 2023-02-28

Fixed

• Fixed bug where online license verification was not retried on network errors, only on non-200 HTTP status codes.

0.9.7 - 2023-02-23

Fixed

• Fixed accidental inclusion of dependency.

0.9.6 - 2023-02-22

Fixed

• Fixed bug that prevented offline licenses from activating the SDK.

0.9.5 - 2023-02-22

Added

• Activated support for Offline licenses.

0.9.4 - 2023-02-21

Fixed

• Fixed a regression that caused problems reading rotated Aztec codes.

0.9.3 - 2023-02-14

Added

• Added this CHANGELOG.md file to the project.

0.9.2 - 2023-02-10

Changed

• Started using main instead of browser target in package.json to avoid problems with SSR frameworks such as Next.js.

0.9.1 - 2023-02-07

This is the first public release, distributed via NPMJS.