Thursday 30 March 2017

Setting up a Zebra Label Printer on Mac OSX

Printing super labels on OSX! Installing you Zebra printer on OSX to print perfect and clear labels is easing using our Thermal Label Printer Driver. Once the set up is complete you can print directly from any application straight to your Zebra Printer. The first thing you need to do is download the Mac Driver from our download page.
We support all Zebra printers, please contact us if you are unsure which printer you need to choose. 

 Run the Zebra Thermal Utility and follow the steps below. 

 Step 1: Plug in your Zebra Printer and Turn it on.

Step 2: Choose how your printer is connected. 
 Step 3: Choose Your Zebra Printer from the list. 


 Step 4: Choose your printer model. 
 Step 5: Select which kind of labels you are using. 

Step 6: Name your printer to identify it, this may include the label type you are printing. 

Step 7: Setup your Zebra's label sizes. 
             You can choose from the sizes in the popup list or enter your own custom sizes.
             You must add at least one size.


 Step 8: Choose the application you are printing from. 
            If you want to print from a website for example UPS you may need to extract your label for it to print correctly on your Zebra. 
           Don't worry our driver can do this and instructions are included. 

 Step 9: Click Add Printer to add your Zebra printer to Mac OS.
             Now you are ready to print your labels.


This software is a commercial product which comes with one year free technical support and updates. The technical support also includes our team helping you set it up via Zoho if you need us too. 

This driver prints directly to your label printer. It is written entirely on Mac OS and is compatible up  to Sonoma and beyond.

We have thousands of customers for our Thermal Label Printer Driver including Apple themselves!

The software is used worldwide and supports many different makes of Thermal Label Printer including Zebra printers! So you don't only need to have a Zebra printer to make use of this software!

Tuesday 28 March 2017

A Journey To Work

Many of our team work off site however our sales team make a boring journey interesting everyday when they come to the office.
Their journey starts off with a brisk walk through scarborough town to the train station to board the train and see all the other people waiting to set off to work, giving them an acknowledging nod knowing the fate of their fellow passengers having to go to work in a job they do not particularly enjoy while our sales team looks forward to a day of work and interacting with their customers.

As the train pulls out of the station our sales team get a last look at Scarborough; at least for now. Once past seamer they look out of the window to see, luscious green fields and wildlife ranging for magpies to deer.
Throughout the journey they notice many different and interesting things. Though many of the fields are full of horses they do get a lovely surprise when spring rolls round and it turn to lambing season where they get to see all the lambs frolicking through the fields.





On their journey our sales team go through a variety of different areas, for example as the train enter into the proximity of Filey, it goes from lush fields and farm houses to small streets of houses, and allotments to busy main roads and big supermarket chains.



We arrive in the heart of Filey for a brisk minute then set of to Hunmanby which is a short five minutes from Filey. However it feels like an entirely different continent, the weather is consistently so contrasting to scarborough; the rainy days at home are sunny days at work, gusty days turn to the hint of a breeze. But no matter what weather it is each day, in either Scarborough or Hunmanby there is still a twenty minute walk to the station and then another twenty minute walk from the station on the other side.
As they exit the train at Hunmanby usually with a casual good bye to the ever friendly train conductors our sales team start their usual route through Hunmanby. After waiting at the train crossing our sales team begins their twenty minute wander to work. With roads one side of the path and houses and fields full of flowers on the other side, when the sun shines the colours come to life illuminating their surroundings in rays of colour.


Saying passing hellos to the villagers out walking their dogs, they wind their way through the quiet streets of Hunmanby. Occasionally popping into the local shop for a refreshing drink for the hard days work ahead. As they near work passing the local garage the owners dog normally comes bounding out for its morning strokes and a bit of fussing over before letting our sales team wander on their way.
Once turning the corner onto Sheepdyke lane where their workplace is situated they past the old jail cells and come to two big wooden gates through which they enter the office grounds, noticing whose cars are parked in the driveway so they know who is at work, to start they day of helping customers and processing orders.

Sunday 26 March 2017

Printing ZPL and EPL files on a Mac

Anyone who has tried to print ZPL or EPL files from a website on a Mac before knows what a pain this can be.

For example Amazon will supply a ZPL file for their FBA item labels. On Windows this file will be sent direct to the printer without a problem. Unfortunately on MacOS ZPL and EPL files cannot be handled by the print system so instead the file is downloaded.

There have been many workarounds for this most of them requiring complex commands in the terminal or manually dragging the files to an app that will send them to the printer.

Another workaround is to use Java on the website to send the file to the printer but this must now (since October 2012 when Apple removed it from the OS for security reasons) be downloaded and installed manually and must be given the appropriate security permissions to run within your web browser. To us this approach seemed cumbersome, complicated and not very secure and is completely dependent on the website supporting printing via Java.

Enter DropPrint our solution to printing ZPL and EPL files on a Mac.
DropPrint is a small application which sits in the dock.

When first opening DropPrint you will want to set the settings to your liking.
Print ZPL and EPL files on Mac OS

The Printer settings on DropPrint allow you to select the printer you wish to send the ZPL or EPL files to or select the "Ask On Print" option to have DropPrint ask which printer to print to when it receives a ZPL Or EPL file.

Once a printer is selected you can begin printing by simply dropping a ZPL or EPL file onto the application window or dock icon.

Print ZPL and EPL files on Mac OS
Another option on the printer settings tab is "Show Notifications" this option as the title reveals will show a notification when a single or group of ZPL or EPL files are sent to the printer.
Print ZPL and EPL files on Mac OS

The unique and most useful feature of our DropPrint application is the ability to watch a selected folder for new ZPL and EPL files and automatically send them to the selected printer. To enable this simply navigate to the Watch Folder tab, check the checkbox to enable watching a folder and click the "Set Location" button to choose the folder to watch for new ZPL and EPL files.

Print ZPL and EPL files on Mac OS

The other settings on the watch folder tab allow you to choose what to do with the ZPL or EPL file after it is sent to the printer. You can choose to either Delete or Move the file once printed, setting the location to move to if required.

The final option allows you to choose whether to apply the move/delete option to files which are dropped onto the application as well as ones which are automatically printed from the watched folder.


DropPrint is a free extra application which comes with our Thermal Printer Driver for Mac which can be found


Here


You can find DropPrint in the extras folder on the Thermal Driver dmg file after purchase.