So, long awaited Image Uploader 6 is posted to the site today. Everybody can download this version and try it out. If you have some questions, difficulties or just something to say us, do not hesitate to contact us. We always value your feedback very much.

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.

Nowadays video content becomes more and more popular on the Internet. Social networks as well as corporate web sites require hosting of video content and playing it online.

The major problem for video content on the Internet is that current internet browsers do not include any video decoders. So if you want to play video online you will have to install some stand-alone platform. I would highlight two major platforms allowing playing video movies:

1. Adobe Flash.
2. Microsoft Silverlight.

Let us consider these two platforms in terms of video support in detail.

Microsoft Silverlight

We all know that Silverlight is officially supported on Windows and Mac platforms. Also there is Moonlight project which is Silverlight implementation for Linux platforms. Starting from the very first version Silverlight supports decoding of WMV format. Moreover, Microsoft has opened WMV decoder source code and granted its usage in Moonlight. So decoding of WMV format is supported on the major computer platforms.

Adobe Flash

During the last years Flash became standard de-facto for playing video on the Internet. The most of users know the video format supported by Flash as FLV but it is not exactly true. FLV is the video and audio container used to deliver video and audio content from server side to the client. The format of this container was opened by Adobe on May, 1, 2008. The container itself can contain the following video formats:

1. Sorenson spark, minimum required flash player version 6.
2. On2 VP6, minimum required flash player version 8.
3. H.264, minimum required flash player version 9.

Now we know what video formats are supported by Flash and Silverlight. Let us examine licensing policies for them.

We get used that image formats usually have open format and reference encoder libraries. You can use these encoders for free. Video formats unlike images get the problem here. They all are patented and have an interesting trick. Decoding is free for end users and does not require any royalties though encoding is not royalty-free. So even if you get Mpeg4 format reference (H.264) and implement encoder by yourself, you will have to pay royalties for its usage. So then…

Video Formats

WMV format

It is Microsoft format for storing and streaming video widespread on Microsoft platforms. There is free for use Windows Media Encoder which allows encoding to WMV. The only limitation is that it works on Windows only.

Sorenson Codec

This video Format is extension for H.264 designed by Sorenson Media, the specification is not opened. The encoder is the part of Sorenson Spark SDK. It seems that this codec was licensed by YouTube and Google. Sorenson do not publish the pricing on their site but anyway it is not a free encoder.

On VP6

Like Sorenson Spark On2 VP6 is the extension for H.264 designed by On2 Technologies, the specification for this format is not opened too. This company sells encoders for this format as part of On2 VP6 Codec SDK and Flix SDK for Direct Show. On2 do not publish pricing on their site as well.

H.264

It is known as Mpeg4 format which is standard de-facto in the world of digital video. In contrast to the previous formats it has opened reference. Nevertheless it is heavily patented and there is a special company MPEG LA that manages licensing royalties for this format. We examined licensing policies and found that there are two major options:

1. For decoder/encoder suppliers who integrate them in end-user solutions.
2. For service providers like IP TV and so on.

In both these cases royalties are required either for each copy of product or for each movie transcoded and streamed server-side. There are a lot of codec suppliers for Mpeg4 format but it seems that they provide implementation only. The licensing stuff is a headache of the company which purchases the codec and wants to use it in its solution.

Video Uploader

Summarizing, we all understand that there are a lot of video formats worldwide in addition to listed ones. Nevertheless, if we want to play movies via the Internet we have to transcode them to formats that can be played back in internet browsers (using Silverlight of Flash). And the core feature of our Video Uploader is transcoding of video movies to a single format relieving server platforms of encoding operations. This way all operations with movies are shifted from server side to the clients simplifying server logic and decreasing server hardware requirements. We have chosen WMV format. Why? Since you do not need to pay anything if you use it on Windows platforms. Today when we released beta version of Video Uploader ActiveX and started getting the feedback from you, our customers, we are searching the way to implement Java version of the product and decide on the question with video-related licensing for our customers.

 

Last week we released new Graphics Mill 5.1. It was minor release containing bug fixes. The most important are:

• Several problems with support of TIFF format;
• Problems with color management engine lead to displaying error popup;
• Problem with deleting of temporary files;
• Improvement of speed of image formats codecs;
• The problem with reading of PSD frames.

We came to decision to release this minor version because some of the issues listed before were critical for our customers. So we just took the version 5 branch of source code, roll out the fixes from the current development version and walked through the tests to be sure that everything was okay.

Nevertheless the team is working on new functionality that will be included into the new version of the product.

27 Oct 2008 Sun released new Java SE 6 update 10. We downloaded this new version and ran Image Uploader regression tests on new Java machine. Tests eliminated that out last 5.5.6 version had problems with events under new Java SE. We found and fixed this problem in several days, and this fix will be the major one in new Image Uploader 5.7 which will be available on the site in several days.

In addition to the problem with new Java SE Image Uploader 5.7 will include 17 bug fixes. The most important are:

1. Fixed memory leak during thumbnails generation in ActiveX version.
2. Now Image Uploader Java preserves resolutions in thumbnails. It means that if you have 300dpi image and generate a thumbnail before upload, the thumbnails will have 300dpi resolution after upload.
3. Now Image Uploader Java supports basic and NTLM authentications.

The detailed list of improvements will be available on the forum and What’s new section after the release date.

 

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.

We released the first version of Photo Kiosk more than a year ago. A lot of people took an interest in this software; we got numerous requests and references for the Photo Kiosk. Thank you all who contacted us and gave feedback. It is always very important to know what functionality you need and what to add into a product to meet your requirements.

We position our software as a solution allowing photo retailers to get orders from clients in “full automatic mode”. It means that customers do not need someone to order prints, they do it by themselves. As different photo retailers have different process to fulfill printing orders and different requirements for the software serving prints ordering, we put feature requests all together and choose the most important ones. After the first version we decided to advance Photo Kiosk in the following directions:

1. Make it easier in configuring and administrating.
2. Add some important for photo retailers features.
3. Make it more stable and fast.

And here is what we did in new Photo Kiosk:

• Support of Bluetooth to receive photos. Yes, everybody knows that cameras on cell phones become better and better. And some of clients want to print photos made from phones. Almost every phone has Bluetooth today, everybody uses headsets. Thus the most convenient way to get photos from phones is to get them via Bluetooth. Now Photo Kiosk is ready to do it.
• Possibility to make color corrections of photos before order them: brightness, contrast, and auto fix.
• Easy configurable crop.
• Customization of Photo Kiosk interface. Now you can customize user interface of the kiosk in accordance to your firm style, or display some advertising if you need.
• Red-eye removal tool in the Photo Kiosk. Now your customers can remove red-eye effect on their photos before order them.
• New Photo Kiosk became faster. Now it loads photos from devices and edit them extremely fast.
• ...and some other improvements.

Here are some screenshots of new Photo Kiosk:

Three weeks ago we released Image Uploader 5.5 (version 5.5.1). During these three weeks a lot of our customers upgraded to new version. We have good references for new Image Uploader, users say that we have success with version 5.5 and Image Uploader works faster and more stable.

Unfortunately the world is not ideal and several problems were found in 5.5.1. Today we are ready to release updated version 5.5.6 which fixes some of them:

• Fixed the problem with custom buttons in ActiveX version.
• Fixed the issue with thumbnail size when they are created with high quality in ActiveX version.
• Fixed the problem with uploading icons instead of thumbnails for some images on Mac platform with Image Uploader Java.
• Now methods GoToParentFolder and GoToPreviousFolder works correctly in Image Uploader Java.

 

As you know our certificate is about to be expired. Several days ago we got new 2-years code signing certificate from Thawte and started to resign our software. Today we posted Image Uploader 4.7.16 and File Downloader 2.0.10 signed with new certificate to the site.

The detailed information how to update Image Uploader and File Downloader can be found on our forum.

Done… Today we released new Image Uploader 5.5. I really like the days like this one when all tests already passed, you just need to compile installers, finally check source code in CVS and mark it with a tag. Actually we are late for 7 days, the previous release date was 20, August. But some of the customers who tested out beta version found problems with tumbnail generation. So we had to examine and fix it and then walk through the tests again.

It was long time without updates for Image Uploader. Some of you, our customers, were waiting for new version in hope that it fixes some basic problems in Java version. Now you can download it and install on your servers to try. We are open for your feedback.

You can read about new functionality and bug fixes included into Image Uploader 5.5 in my previous post.