December 17, 2002
my brain’s not all that rusty…
it’s been a while since writing any visual basic code, but i fired up vb6 to code a little activex control. i needed the http put method implemented in the browser, but the browsers don’t directly support put. activex is the simplest way to add on this type of functionality. (i actually like activex technology - the security model is what microsoft f*cked up.) yeah, i could’ve written it in java, but we’ve already got a code signing certificate for activex. the wininet api makes it a piece of cake! i had a few minor problems, but all in all pretty painless. i’ve still only got the code in a vb app, but converting it is a no brainer. so now i can just drag and drop file uploads. well, not to mention that http post file uploads can be a killer hit on performance! now i got a pretty progress bar, cancel button, can check the file size before the upload… and it’s just cool.
side note: the .net stuff looks cool and i assume i could do a control with vb.net, but i don’t know how long it’ll take for the “.net framework” to be installed on enough client machines. wonder if flash mx could do “put”. i’d love a cross platform solution… at one time i thought java might be it, but who know how long java on windows will work? and i’ve only seen one signed applet in my life… not too promising…
sounds awesome. we could use a control like that, but i agree with you about the cross-platform issues. most of the java applets i’ve seen are not that good. flash mx would be cool, but i doubt it could do ‘put’. it does have some xml socket thingy, but i don’t know much about it.
glad your sharing with the world once again!
flash would run in the security “sandbox” of the plugin so i don’t think it would be able to “touch” the local filesystem. i was wondering what would happen if i use the ms code signing stuff to sign a .swf. doubt it, but maybe… also in the works is a “get” (download) control as well. not as cool as the “put” one, but could be handy and more informative than the built in ms stuff - maybe be able to resume a download if your connection dies, etc.
also interested in mkcol and propfind stuff that i might be able to exploit. i’m looking at maybe being able to drag a whole folder stucture. (this is all sort of a hack, but a cool one, until we get full webdav working in tf. ’cause then you can just mount tf as a web folder. the other cool thing is you’ll have instant versioning since tf does that now!)