Started planning of new Image Uploader version we decided to focus on three goals: support of images of big size, usage simplicity, and wide support of browsers.

The first goal – support of big images – is the solution for well-known problem when Image Uploader was unable to create thumbnails for big images and sent icons instead. We realized that modern cameras increase megapixels from year to year and the problem became serious. Our development team had to reimplement image processing modules of both ActiveX and Java versions and as a result we have support of large images and have increased the quality of thumbnails.

The second goal – make Image Uploader easier to embed to customers’ solutions – required to survey what platforms were used by our customers. We found out that two of them – ASP.NET and PHP – form absolute majority. We implemented special solutions for each platform (Image Uploader ASP.NET control and Image Uploader PHP library) wrapping Image Uploader and allowing to use it in a straight forward way on a platform.

The third goal is support of modern browsers. In recent times several new browsers were released – Chrome and Internet Explorer 8. We made some efforts to test Image Uploader on these new ones and adapt the control to them. As a result Image Uploader supports these two browsers and Opera 9 additionally.

Here is the overall list of new features and improvements in Image Uploader 6.

Both ActiveX and Java Version Improvements

• Three editions of Image Uploader are available: Express, Standard, and Professional.
• Memory friendly image processing.
• Image Uploader ASP.NET Control and Image Uploader PHP library solutions making Image Uploader usage easier on corresponding server platforms.
• Support of cloud storages: Amazon S3 and Nirvanix. Now Image Uploader can upload files and metadata to these online storages.
• Support of AJAX-enabled applications. Now visibility of Image Uploader can be handled via CSS.
• The ability to customize POST request sent by Image Uploader was improved.
• Image Uploader supports review of response sent by web server back in the ImageUploader.PackageComplete event.

ActiveX Version Specific Improvements

• Support of Internet Explorer 8.
• Support of new non-admin ActiveX controls feature in Internet Explorer 8.
• New installation progress of Image Uploader ActiveX control.
• Improved estimation of remaining upload time in the progress bar.
• Refactored memory management. Several problems that could be potentially led to crash were found and fixed.
• The problem when Image Uploader froze on “waiting for response from server” stage was resolved.
• Fixed several problems with drag-and-drop functionality in upload pane.
• Thumbnail in the progress dialog can be hidden now.
• Fixed the problem when some methods and properties of Image Uploader became unavailable in the case when InitComplete event handler was specified.
• Fixed several problems with saving and restoring of upload list.
• A number of minor improvements and bug fixes.

Java Version Specific Improvements

• Support of Chrome and Opera 9.
• Improved quality of resize.
• Increased speed of folders tree navigation.
• Windows 2008 network shares are supported now.
• Fixed the problem with proxies on Windows platforms.
• Now files can be deleted after upload.
• Now files can be deleted from folder pane.
• Fixed the problem with checkboxes on Mac platform.
• Fixed the problem with tree pane refreshing.
• Fixed several problems with saving and restoring of upload list.
• Fixed the problem with extracting of UserComment fields from EXIF.
• Fixed the problem with deleting of temporary files created by Image Uploader.
• A number of minor improvements and bug fixes.

In the Internet Explorer 8 developers’ blog I found very interesting post IE8 Security Part II: ActiveX Improvements. This post gives the outlook on security approaches and improvements in new Internet Explorer. The most important thing I found was Non-Admin ActiveX. This technology allows installing ActiveX controls not having administrator privileges. The only limitation is that you need to run IE8 under Windows Vista.

I was really interested in this feature and decided to dig into it. I found the documentation on Non-Admin ActiveX feature and created ImageUploader5.cab in accordance with their suggestions. After that I took clear Windows Vista SP1 virtual machine, downloaded the latest IE8 Beta2, and installed it. Then I created small sample page and installed updated cab file on this page. After that I created new user without administrative privileges in Vista and logged in under this user. I launched IE8 and opened my sample page from our internal test server… and it worked. IE8 asked me whether I trusted Image Uploader and then allowed to install Image Uploader. It worked like a charm.

So now Microsoft users have the ability to install ActiveX controls without administrative permissions and Microsoft treats this as safe. Upcoming Image Uploader 6 will be compatible with Non-Admin ActiveX IE8 feature.