Originally Posted by Nayef

This may be a silly question, though I'd like to hear your thoughts on this, and I know most of you have already applied. But I noticed that there are hand-written passport applications in addition to ones generated by the passport wizard after filling out the info online. The latter application generates a barcode on the top left part of the first page. I'll post photos to illustrate the differences. My question is: do you think that sending out the application from the online wizard with the barcode makes processing it faster? I would think that the barcode contains all the info, which means they wouldn't have to type it by hand.

DS-11 generated from online wizard with barcode

DS-11 pdf to be filled out by hand (no barcode)