For me, is the best I’ve used until today… Before this plug-in exist, I’ve made (nearly 2005) an uploader with js and swf… In Flash I’ve use the FileReference class and in JS I’ve a callback functions and filters like which extensions are allowed and bla bla bla… very useful when I’ve used :)

http://devzone.zend.com/article/3650-desktop-image-uploaders-using-adobe-air-and-javascript

Jack Herrington posted an interesting Image Uploader using Javascript and Adobe AIR. Not sure if this is what you’re looking for, or if you’re needing something to put into an online app. Check it out though.

http://www.aurigma.com/

Here’s another pay-for-it image uploader. It’s a java app that lets you browse your computer’s files for pictures, and check a box above them to include them in the upload.

SmugMug has a variety of image uploaders to choose from when uploading images to your galleries. One of them is a plug in for Windows that allows you to right-click a folder/photo in Windows, select “Send To” from the menu, then “SmugMug”. I’ve used it for a while when uploading massive amounts of photos from my Nikon D200 to my SmugMug account.

http://lukebrookhart.smugmug.com/

I use flickr for most of my photos and it supports a wide variety of photo uploads depending on your situation:

Email:

I can send an email with multiple attachments and have them go straight to flickr, the address is determined in flickr settings. This way when my family sends me photos, I can put them in my account. Or if I’m lazy I can even drag photos to mail.app and have them go to flickr quickly (tagged even with a common description and title).

Quicksilver:
This is handy for small batches. The plugin just uploads with tags the photos you select.

iPhoto/Aperture:
If you edit, organize a lot of photos there is a handy iPhoto plugin that lets you upload to flickr. You can also get one that lets you upload to Facebook. This method is what my wife does and I used to do for most of our photos just so we have a local permanent store, and then a web store and depending on the audience (everyone, or Facebook friends) we can send it to the right place.

Lastly…

Flickr Uploadr:

This works when the other methods don’t or you’re in a hurry. Not my favorite, but not bad either.

You might like to try out our solution – directupload.com
It’s just dead simple, with absolutely no advanced features, and a simple interface.

I have seen a mootools one before that looks quite nice.

Try the demo link here

http://the-stickman.com/web-development/multiple-file-uploader-mootools-version/

i use a upload class that i intergrate into my php pages when needs be the class its self is brilliant and can do many things, for instance create thumbnail and an original of an upload so for galleries one upload will create the 2 pictures for you.

the class can be found at

http://www.verot.net/php_class_upload.htm

alwasy works for me

This is hands down the best file uploader on the web, I use it to push files to all sorts of places!

http://digitarald.de/project/fancyupload/

Hey Marc – hope all is well in the Twin Cities. We’ve been using JavaAtWork’s MyUploader 1.4 with great success at MyClosetMyLife.com (since our initial implementation they’ve upgraded several times to include better functionality and additional features). Fairly customizable, supports all the popular browser flavors, works out of the box on MacOS, Vista and XP, and supports multiple languages for the server-side script (ours is written in PHP). Also has fairly good client-side image resizing capabilities to reduce bandwidth. My only complaint is that more amateur users aren’t able to easily find their “Photos” folder on Apple machines, which the browser-built-in filebox’s common dialog window defaults to.

If you’d like to see our server-side code, just drop me a line.

hey marc,
you propably already got this answer, but just in case:
FancyUpload (demo) by harald kirschner is a nice flash/javascript-based solution which has plenty of config-options, is easy to style via css, seems to be clean implemented in javascript and actionscript, is actively maintained…and after all it degrades gracefully!
the only problem could be the dependency on mootools. but you can still use jquery or whatever and just combine and gzip fancyUpload with mootools as a whole. this should not be too much overhead.

greetings from germany,
leo

Hey,
recently i saw some web-apps which allowed to upload files via email. The customer sends an email with attachments to a personalized email-adress (adwhjkadh52hkj423k234hj@web-app.com or myusername@web-app.com or whatever). The email is then processed via a script (propably executed via cronjob). A confirmation email could be sent to the customer as well (e.g. “your files xyz.jpg, foobar.pdf have been processed an can be accesed via myusername.web-app.com/files-9823jkakjlwa/”).

Advantages:

• Easy to use for not so tech-savvy users
• In fact, easy to use for kinda everyone (just forward an email with those attachments and wait a few minutes)
• The interface (email-client deskop- or web-based is already familiar to the customer)
• No technical requirements for the customer (e.g. flash, javascript, java…)
• some more…

Disadvantages:

• No realtime feedback (e.g. “those are invalid files”-email after the cronjob processed the files)
• Works great in some cases, but propably only suitable as an addition to a “real” web-based solution integrated in the application

Looking forward to hear about the answers which were submitted.
Regards, leo

I hate SWF Upload, its too bulky to implement and is as you say, shaky. I find the using standard file fields is reliable and tends to have the best result. If you have very large files, i find using Rad Upload Java Applet to be very useful in these cases.

I built a .NET smart client that the user must do a one-time download to their local box (including the .NET framework). This smart client locally queues a single or set of images selected by the user. When the user is ready, the client upload. The smart client will take the images, compress to a predetermined ratio, and stream the images to a Web Service. There is a bunch more going on; however, these are the fundamentals. We have seen an exponential increase in user satisfaction. What used to take an hour or so to upload two or three dozen images, now takes less than a minute. The client-side compression alone reduces the file size up to 100% (e.g. 4 MB file compressed to 40 KB). Anyway, hope this helps… -Dan

Have you tried “Upload Ease”? I was looking for the same sort of thing (around the same time coincidentally) and decided to develop my own.

Upload Ease is a Java Applet that supports compression, hashing, image thumbnail generation and other image constraint operations, folder uploads, file notes, and much, much more.

Comments welcome…

Well if you have a wordpress account then you can upload Images there and you can copy there link location and use it wherever you want . Also the option of Pages.google.com can not be ignored .

Also you can upload at imageshack.us and keep track by just a simple sign up :)

UploadEase update – UploadEase 1.1 now supports drag and drop from the user’s native environment, for the ultimate in convenience and simplicity for users and developers uploading files/images to websites.

Download and try it out for free at http://UploadEase.com/.

Version 1.2 of UploadEase has just been released and is available for download from our website.

It now supports dynamic text or image watermarking, UI customisation of colors, text and logos for matching website themes and internationalisation, enhanced one-off and per file form variable upload controls, and the ability to abort/cancel an upload in progress.

It doesn’t get much better than this!

UploadEase 1.3 is now complete and ready to download!

Highlights include:

• Image quality/compression, progressive mode, and scale hint options
• Dynamic thumnail/constrained image generation via callbacks
• Scalable text and image watermarks
• Enhanced cookie support for automatically copying cookies from the browser, manually specifying multiple cookies, and specifying the cookie management policy

In addition we have identified and fixed all known bugs in the 1.2 release – not that there were many :-).

Please refer to the download page and reference documentation for more information and examples.

At MessyCloset we’ve tested and ending up going with Uploadify for photo uploads.

Just curious.. what was your choice of file uploader in the end?