Evaluating Customer's Canvas
The Customer's Canvas Design Editor is distributed in two versions: on-premises and cloud. The on-premises version is deployed on your Windows server, physical or virtual, giving you full control over its resources and configuration. This version requires experience with ASP.NET. The cloud version is already deployed on our servers and it does not require any Windows server experience. Both versions have the same features and provide the same capabilities to integrate into web-to-print sites. You can evaluate any version:
- The On-premises version can be requested on the Request On-premises Trial page. This package is a compiled code of Customer's Canvas, which you deploy to your IIS Server.
- The Cloud version can be requested on the Request Hosted Trial page. This package requires only a web browser to start the evaluation.
These versions include a demo application demonstrating features of the Design Editor and how it can be applied to a typical web-to-print workflow. Evaluation versions are full-featured and the only limitation is that they expire in 14 days.
Evaluating Customer's Canvas On-premises
When you request the Customer's Canvas evaluation package, you get an e-mail containing a link to download the package. In this package, you can find the Customer's Canvas application, License Manager, assets, and user data.
To launch the application, perform the following steps:
- Download
CustomersCanvasServer.zip. - Deploy Customer's Canvas on your computer as described in the corresponding topic.
- Launch License Manager. Note that you need an Internet connection to register an evaluation license key.
- Click Activate 14-day evaluation, fill in your account details, and then click Proceed.
- Verify the license type and expiration date in the confirmation dialog.
- Browse the
index.htmlpage.
To launch the application on an old computer, like Windows 7, make sure that Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 or higher is installed. This is required even if you run the application in a different browser because the IE engine is used for LESS compilation on the server side.
Now, you can continue with:
- Learning more about integrating Customer's Canvas into your system; see the Integration with E-commerce Overview topic.
- Learning more about adding your own product templates; see the Configuring Your First Print Product topic.
- Learning more about license types and registering license keys; see the Registering Production License Keys topic.
Evaluating Customer's Canvas in a Cloud
When you request the trial, you get an e-mail confirmation containing:
- Your login and password for your Customer's Canvas account.
- The API URL used to integrate Customer's Canvas into your system. The URL appears as follows:
https://h.customerscanvas.com/Users/xxxxxxxx-yyyy-xxxx-yyyy-xxxxxxxxxxxx/SimplePolygraphy/Resources/Generated/IframeApi.js, where xxxxxxxx-yyyy-xxxx-yyyy-xxxxxxxxxxxx is a unique identifier of your Customer's Canvas instance.
Though you can still use the HTTP protocol, it's recommended to integrate the Hosted solution using the HTTPS protocol due to the move towards a more secure web.
To run the trial application, you just need to open index.html in your browser.
Now, you can continue with the following:
- Getting familiar with the cloud version of Customer's Canvas; see the Understanding the Cloud Version of Customer's Canvas topic.
- Learning more about the integration of Customer's Canvas into your system; see the Integration with E-commerce Overview topic.
- Learning about adding your own product templates; see the Configuring Your First Print Product topic.
Demo Application Overview
Both Design Editor versions contain a one-page demo application with the same interface and functionality. In this demo, you can edit a product. To get the print-ready output file, click the Download PDF button.
