Re: File upload from a Web browser

Fisher Mark (FisherM@is3.indy.tce.com)
Fri, 14 Jul 95 12:41:00 PDT

Netscape has announced support for Java in their browsers, probably by the
end of the year
(<URL:http://www.netscape.com/newsref/pr/newsrelease25.html>). This lets
the genie out of the bottle, as Netscape can then be extended in a nearly
arbitrary fashion. From what I understand of Java, it should not take a lot
of time to create a file upload applet.

Someone should do this, as many of us have had to create work-arounds to
support our applications; it would be so much nicer just to tell users to
fill out a Web form to submit their document rather than forcing them to run
another program (and forcing me to *code* another program!).

Although we need object-oriented Web extensions too, file upload is a
relatively simple task that enables the easy creation of webs that can be
written by the same tools from which they are read. After all, you can
regard a filesystem as a concrete, non-inheritable object with data
(filenames, directory names, file data) and methods (open, write, stat, ...)
just like many objects we use in object-oriented programming.
======================================================================
Mark Fisher Thomson Consumer Electronics
fisherm@indy.tce.com Indianapolis, IN