Today we released new sample applications for our Aurigma Up. Now they support multiple files selection and image/video recompression. They are available for download from our website.

Maybe you have already noticed that starting from Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion), Apple had changed the popup displayed when you try to open a web page with a Java applet. Now it looks like this:

A signed applet comes with a signature which should be verified by a browser, which checks if the code signing certificate is valid and issued by a trusted source. As soon as the signature is verified, an applet is launched in the browser. Technically, signed applets can get more control over a client computer, like access to the file system, registry and so on. The Java standard admits that a web browser should show a popup window in order to get approval from a user. On PCs this popup window is modest and just informs a user that an applet that is signed with a verified certificate is about to launch.

Apple decided to go a different way. Apple displays the popup windows which you see in this post. It says that “the digital signature could not be verified” even if it is signed with the correct certificate. Of course, end-users, who are not computer-savvy, are confused with this dialog and click the “Deny” button, which prevents the launching of the applet. They then cannot use important services (e.g. banking software) that they go to websites for, or try to contact a company’s technical support.Companies cannot do anything because the problem with the applet’s confusing message is out of their control. All they can do is to instruct users to click the “Allow” button. It sounds very simple but the problem is pretty serious because there are so many confused users who, ironically, are preventing themselves from getting services. If you Google this problem, you will find that a lot of companies all over the world are running afoul of this issue.

Apple support keeps saying that the verification logic has been changed in Mac OS X 10.8. "Unidentified developer" means a source other than the Mac App Store or a Developer ID-identified developer. Taking into account that Java applets cannot participate in the Mac OS Developer program, there is no way to address this issue on Apple platforms. This is really sad news...

Just tried to upload files with our HTML5 Uploader on Motorola Zoom and it worked! It works really impressively like on desktop computers. No Apps, no plugins, just open an upload page in Chrome and start uploading. Google is really improving the browser!

On December 29 2011 Microsoft published security update Microsoft Security Bulletin MS11-100 - Critical. The security update has been released to fix ASP.NET DoS vulnerability. The update puts a limit to number of key-value pairs that can be sent in a single HTTP POST request. By default not more than 500 variables can be uploaded per one request.

If Image Uploader is configured to upload all files in a single HTTP POST request, it can exceed this amount which leads to failed upload requests. If it happens, error 500 (Operation is not valid due to the current state of the object) is thrown. The problem can be addressed by reconfiguring the uploader or changing your web server settings. Find the detailed information how to fix this issue in this topic: PRB: Image Uploader ASP.NET generates “Operation is not valid due to current state of object” error.

Today I would like to dwell on very popular question asked by our customers. How to organize sending additional data along with files in Image Uploader. It can be very helpful if your website requires some metadata along with files like tags, name of a set to associate the file on server side, etc.

From our perspective we see this task consisting of 3 big portions: 1) displaying and associating data with files selected for upload in Image Uploader, 2) entering data by end-users, and 3) sending data along with files to server-side. Let’s examine approaches to implementing each of them.

Displaying additional data in Image Uploader

Custom upload pane

From the very early versions Image Uploader comes with a separate visual control called Thumbnail. The idea is quite simple. The control is designed to display thumbnail or icon for a specified file selected by a user for upload in “parent” Image Uploader. This way, you can hide upload pane in Image Uploader and create your own custom one using multiple Thumbnail controls in HTML layout. This approach is very flexible. You can create any HTML layout of upload pane you want. Additional data can be displayed next to files selected for upload as well as you can surround them with input fields allowing your clients to enter additional information. All you need to implement this approach is a good understanding of HTML and JavaScript. The product comes with ready to use sample application illustrating this method, it’d be a good starting point.

Additional data inside Image Uploader

Version 7 introduced new way of displaying custom information inside Image Uploader. Now each file in Image Uploader can be accompanied with a custom text. It is formatted in HTML, set through API and rendered inside the control next to each file selected for upload. This way is much simpler than custom HTML pane and requires less coding. The approach is used in the Photo Order demo application available on our web site and redistributed with the product.

How End-users Populate Selected Files with Additional Data

It is not enough to display any data beneath or near selected files, it is very important to give end-users convenient way to fill in data during upload process. User interface layout will depend on which of two ways you implement in your application.

If you stick with custom HTML panel, layout can be anything you want since it is pure HTML and you can use any input fields available there.

If you decide to use the second approach, you have less variety in user interface. Since all data is rendered and displayed inside Image Uploader and it doesn’t support input fields, you will have to organize input of data somewhere in HTML outside of the control. The workflow will be the same regardless of what information you are uploading: a client selects one or several items in upload pane, after that he/she switches to HTML panel and specifies values for selected files there. As soon as the input process is finished, the values are passed inside Image Uploader via JavaScript API, are associated with the selected files and Image Uploader displays the entered information next to them.

Sending Data to Server

The both approaches require a special JavaScript code doing the following. After end-user hits Upload button and prior to starting the upload process, your script should iterate through files selected for upload, and populate their tags with user specified values. It is up to you in what format to save multiple fields in this property; it can be XML or some other format. On server side you get a tag received with each file and extract values stored inside it.

Afterwords

That’s the idea. I guess having documentation and two ready-to-use sample applications will help you to choose the way to implement sending additional data and will give you good starting point for implementation. If you have any questions, feel free to contact our support team, they will be glad to assist you with that.

Good news for customers who use Aurigma Up (Apple iPhone upload solution). We are preparing new version for submitting to App Store. New release will be multilingual and will come with 16 translations: Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Czech, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Swedish, Turkish, Spanish, Hebrew, and Russian.

During last several months we got multiple complaints from users that Image Uploader had problems with GUI in Firefox and Chrome under Mac OS X. We were not the only one company having these troubles with Java applets on Apple platform, there were a lot of posts on Mozilla and Apple forums from developers about that. Since we have Apple Developer account we tried to contact Apple about this issue, they confirmed it but didn’t reveal any time frames on resolving the problem.

Several weeks ago Apple released Java 1.6.0.26, this version works both in Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and 10.7 (Lion). Preparing new Image Uploader 7.0.35 for release, we invested significant time for testing this Java with our product under both versions of Apple operating systems. The results are much, much better. The applet works perfectly under Max OS X 10.6 and 10.7 in Safari, Firefox, and Chrome. The only limitation that we found is no drag and drop support in Firefox/Chrome under 10.6 and in Safari/Firefox/Chrome under 10.7. All other functionality works perfectly in Image Uploader 7.0.35 and Java 1.6.0.26.

Today we released new Image Uploader Flash 7.2.0. This new version contains significant changes making the product more reliable and faster. New approaches to development under Adobe Flash allowed us to improve uploader speed and responsiveness of user interface. New version comes with support of most recent browser versions: Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox 4. Just download and give it a try, this version is really worth to upgrade to.

During last several weeks we are getting complaints from client that their users, who do not have administrator privileges, cannot install or launch Image Uploader ActiveX in Internet Explorer. This problem was caused by changes in Internet Explorer logic and appears after installing one of Microsoft updates. To resolve this problem, your Image Uploader should be updated to the most recent version 7.0.28 (released on May 11, 2011).

If you are existing Image Uploader customer and you have plans to upgrade to version 7, hurry up! On May 16, 2011 special upgrade offer will be closed. One week remains!