A8Dropzone

The A8Dropzone is the ideal addition to your website! Great for

Photo development Online Community Video portal Print shop Picture gallery

Document management Wiki Web Application File Sharing Content Management System

and of course for all situations and services where people need to upload files to your server quickly and easily on the web!

The A8Dropzone simplifies all file uploads and provides the following key features:

• Upload by Drag-&-Drop of one or even several files onto the A8Dropzone
• Upload by copying files in File Explorer and clicking on the A8Dropzone
• Upload Images currently stored in your system clipboard (e.g. screenshots) by clicking the A8Dropzone
• Media Converter PLUS
• Image Center PLUS
• Upload of entire directories including all sub-directories!
• NEW in V2.9:
  • Apple Mac compatible
  • enable/disable A8Dropzone from Javascript
  • take screenshot (no external tool required)
• Easy integration
• Runs in all browsers (Java Applet Technology)
• Doesn't lock up your browser - uploads files in the background

The following video demonstrates the features of the A8Dropzone and how you could immediately integrate it into your web application.
Compared to "normal" file uploads, the A8Dropzone is the "cool" solution for you and your clients!

Media Converter PLUS

Media Converter PLUS accepts many different audio- and video file formats and converts files on the users's PC before the actual upload to your server!

The Media Converter PLUS can be started by pressing down the CTRL key on your keyboard while dropping the file onto the A8Dropzone.

• (I) Input-Stream-Selection
  Convert audio and/or video
  Codecs (mp3, aac, flv, mp4 [h.264])
  Bitrates and Sampling/Frame-Rates
  Mono/Stereo
• (C) ... crop video horizontally/vertically
• (S) ... set video output size
• (O) ... set audio/video offset for AV synchronization
• Cut video at beginning/end
• (G) ... GO-Button starts conversion
• (L) ... Log Output
• (P) ... Progressbar & ETA
• (U) ... Upload-Button available after conversion

This way any media file will be converted to a format suitable for easy playback on the web (Audio: mp3, Video: mp4 [H.264] or flv). Before starting the conversion, bitrates, framerates, video resolution and other useful settings can be made. By converting and optimizing files on the client's computer, upload time and transfer bandwidth are drastically reduced and the server does not need the tools or processing power to do the conversion. h.264 encoded videos are also automatically prepared for "streaming playback".

It's the ideal solution for all online applications where users can easily upload even large multimedia files!

Features:

• HD Video transcoder profiles
• VOB / DVD to h264 mp4/avi (automatically combines all VOBs of a DVD!)
• BluRay / m2ts to h264 mp4/avi full resolution!
• audio / video input stream selector for DVDs/BluRays
• video crop horizontal/vertical (e.g. crop away black bars)
• audio/video skew correction get audio and video back in sync
• asterisk transcode audio for use in asterisk / trixbox
• powerful ffmpeg GUI frontend - try it out below! (converted files are in C:\A8Dropzone)

media conversion using ffmpeg and MP4Box

Image Center PLUS

With Image Center PLUS, images can be cropped and prepared for upload!

Image Center PLUS can be started by pressing down the CTRL key on your keyboard while dropping the file onto the A8Dropzone and when uploading an image from the system clipboard (e.g. screenshot).

1. Crop image
   • New in v2.8: Aspect ratio
2. Info: original & selected size
3. Image size for upload
4. Filename
5. Upload-Button

By allowing the selection of image portions ("crop image") and resizing the image to a suitable size before the actual upload to the server, A8Dropzone is the ideal solution for quick and easy uploads of e.g. screenshots (created by Alt-Print) and any other image files.

resizing/cropping of large image files using ImageMagick

Demo

Try out A8Dropzone for yourself!

Here you can test drive the A8Dropzone and be amazed by how easy it now is to transfer files to a web server! And don't forget to upload images - especially screenshots - from the system clipboard. Simply press the "printscreen" key on your keyboard and then left-click the A8Dropzone.

Note: In this demo you can upload files up to 20M of size.

Your installed Java version(s):

Download

Latest Version:

a8dropzone-2.9.4.jar   (2012-04-27)

By downloading you accept the License Agreement.

zendesk Widget - FREE

Use the free widget in your zendesk support system!

How?

Simply add the following 2 lines of code as a "custom widget" to the ticket page and immediately attach files the "new way"! <div id="a8dz">A8Dropzone goes here...</div> <script type="text/javascript">Widget.require('http://www.a8dropzone.com/zendesk/a8dropzone-zendesk-widget.js.php');</script>
(Widget and A8Dropzone full license are FREE for all zendesk.com subdomains)

System Requirements

The A8Dropzone is a Java applet which requires you to have the latest Java Plugin installed in your browser (Java 6):

• Java Runtime & Browser-Plugin free download from java.com

If you want to use the built in audio/video media converter, the A8Dropzone will download additional tools (ffmpeg, mp4box and other required files) which - for now - only work on Windows based systems.

Joomla! Plugin - FREE

A few quick steps to your free A8Dropzone Joomla! Plugin:

1. Download latest version: a8dropzone-2.9.4-joomlaPlugin.zip

2. Install in Joomla "Extensions"

3. Activate Plugin

3.1 Optional: Set integration parameters (see "Integration" for details)

4. Install license key

You can now find the A8Dropzone in the image dialog and the Joomla! media library:

Joomla! (www.joomla.org) is a very popular, widely used and free of charge Content Management System (CMS), which - besides having many standard features for the creation and management of dynamic websites - can be extended by an abundance of available plugins. The free A8Dropzone Joomla! plugin is one of them: For Joomla! Users Unleash the power of A8Dropzone to comfortably upload entire directory structures of image and media files with a single drag&drop action. For Hosting Providers Provide your customers with a great additional feature for easy uploading of images and files to Joomla! Your customers will be thrilled and greatly appreciate this service. Looking for Joomla hosting? Our hosting provides an all-inclusive package for your own virtual server and comes with the A8Dropzone Joomla! plugin pre-installed.

Activ8 is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Joomla! Project or Open Source Matters. The Joomla! logo is used under a limited license granted by Open Source Matters the trademark holder in the United States and other countries.

Integration

Tutorial (Englisch)

Read our lateste Extensive Tutorial and learn how to integrate the A8Dropzone into your own web project to create a great user experience!

The tutorial covers:

• Client- and server-side implementation (Javascript + PHP)
• How-To limit the number of files
• How-To add file-type-icons and fancy thumbnails of uploaded images
• How-To delete files using AJAX
• How-To rename files, add descriptions and tags using a dialog and AJAX

Upload to Amazon S3

In this special tutorial you can find out how to use the A8Dropzone for direct file and directory uploads to Amazon S3.

How it works

A8Dropzone generates POST requests just like the old-fashioned HTML upload input - so you can implement the server side as usual. But using the A8Dropzone you can do more - creating a whole new user experience with an absolutly new and extremely easy way of uploading files: you can alter the page contents dynamically. For a simple demonstration of the new possibilities please watch the demo video above.
By the way: If the user has an image in the system clipboard and simply left-clicks the A8Dropzone, the A8Dropzone converts that image to a PNG file and uploads it immediately to the server - an ideal solution for screenshots!

Easy integration

Simply place the a8dropzone-X.Y.Z.jar file on your webserver and integrate the applet into your HTML code like this:

Explanation: The A8Dropzone generates POST requests to the URL you specify in "postURL". You can add other request parameters (e.g. a session id) that will be sent to the server in each request: "postParamX" (X=0..n). The javascript function you wish to have called after a successful file upload you specify in "responseFunction". This function will be called with a single parameter: the response coming from the server. Note: the "mayscript" parameter tells the browser that the applet should be allowed to call javascript functions. If the user now uploads several files with one "drag & drop"-operation, each file will be posted to the server individually. After each request the javascript function will be called. You can define the "label" of the A8Dropzone and specify the "encoding" of the server's response. Using the "directoryUpload" parameter you define if your users can upload entire directory-trees: If set to "true" the A8Dropzone will send the custom HTTP-Headers "A8AbsolutePath" and "A8RelativePath" in each POST request.

This is a simple example of how to implement a "responseFunction":

Naturally the users need the Java plugin installed on their browsers, which is part of the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 6 and can be downloaded here: SUN Java Downloads. Very large images might not be editable within the ImageCenter due to the amount of memory assigned to the Java applet by the browser. However there is no maximum file size for uploads.

On the server side you handle the requests from the A8Dropzone just like any other file upload request coming from a HTML form with enctype="multipart/form-data". Since the A8Dropzone uploads the files "in the background" while the user doesn't leave the current page, you should process the upload-requests seperately - similar to processing AJAX-requests on the server.

If you set the parameter "directoryUpload" to true, users can upload entire directory-trees by dropping a directory onto the A8Dropzone. In this case the A8Dropzone sends the following HTTP headers to the server:

• A8AbsolutePath ... the absolute path of the original file of the client (e.g: "C:\temp\test.pdf")
• A8RelativePath ... the path of the client's file relative to the uploaded root directory
  e.g: the user uploads the directory "C:\temp\files":
  C:\temp\files\f1.pdf
  C:\temp\files\subdir1\f2.pdf
  A8RelativePath will be "files\f1.pdf" and "files\subdir1\f2.pdf" accordingly. This makes reading the original directory structure extremly easy on the server side.

Note: The paths contain the clients system specific path separator character (\ under windows and / under linux).

If a user uploads a huge file (see parameter "chunkSize" below) the file is split into pieces and the HTTP headers A8Chunk and A8Chunks are sent along in each request. To put the pieces back together on the server after receiving the last chunk you could do a cat chunks* > all on a linux system.

In order for the applet to be allowed to perform all these operations the JAR-file is signed using our code signing certificate.

Parameters

Required Parameters

licenseKey

The license key you will receive after ordering

postURL

Target URL for file uploads (usually a script on your server that receives and handels files)

responseFunction

Name of the JavaScript function, the A8Dropzone calls after each file upload
1 parameter = response-body from server

encoding

Character encoding of the HTTP-Response (e.g. UTF-8)

Optional Parameters

parameterName

Name of the parameter of the file for the server (default = "file" corresponds to <input type="file" name="file">)

chunkSize

Large files are sent to the server in several requests. This parameter defines the max request size. (in Bytes, default = "2147483648" .. 2GB)
e.g.: setting a chunkSize of 1073741824 (=1GB) and uploading a 2.5GB big file will result in 3 requests to the server: 1GB, 1GB, 0.5GB. On the server the parts can then be joined together to the original big file.
A8Dropzone sends the additional HTTP headers A8Chunk and A8Chunks in each request.

postParam0, postParam1, ...

Parameters sent in each POST-request to the server (e.g. Session-ID)

postParamsFunction

Name of a Javascript function called before each file upload to generate dynamic post parameters. E.g:

function myPostParamsFunction() {
  var a = new Array();
  a[0] = "dynamicParam1=value1";
  a[1] = "dynamicParam2=" + document.getElementById("aHiddenInput").value;
  return a;
}

delayBetweenFiles

Delay between file uploads (in milliseconds, default = 0)

label

A8Dropzone label

directoryUpload

true / false ... recursive directory uploads possible?

filenameMustMatch

Java Regular Expression defining which files can be uploaded
e.g. ^.*\.(jpg|wav)$ ... accepts only jpg and wav files

filenameMustMatchError

Error message shown if filename does not match 'filenameMustMatch'

maxFileSize

File size limit (in Bytes)

maxFileSizeError

Error message shown if file is larger than 'maxFileSize' bytes

imageCenter

never, possible (=default), always ... prohibit / allow / force Image Center PLUS (for images)

imageMaxWidth

Maximum image width of images uploaded from Image Center (in Pixels)

imageMaxHeight

Maximum image height of images uploaded from Image Center (in Pixels)

imageAspect

Force aspect ratio, e.g. "16:9" or "1,7777777")

imageDownload0, imageDownload1, ...

optional URLs to download ImageMagick utilities (convert.exe, DLLs, ...)

transcoder

never, possible (=default), always ... prohibit / allow / force Media Converter PLUS (for audio/video-files)

transcoderDownload0, transcoderDownload1, ...

optional URLs to download utilities (ffmpeg.exe, preset-files, MP4Box.exe, ...)

transcoderAudio

true / false ... accept audio uploads

audioProfile0, audioProfile1, ...

Audio profile definition in the form
name|ffmpeg-encoder|extension|bitrates|samplingrates|channels|ffmpeg params
e.g. mp3|libmp3lame|.mp3|32k,64k,96k*,128k,192k,256k,320k|22050*,44100,48000|1,2
e.g. aac|aac|.aac|32k,64k,128k,256k*|22050,44100*|1,2|-strict experimental
(trailing * = default selection)

transcoderVideo

true/false ... accept video uploads

videoProfile0, videoProfile1, ...

Video profile definition in the form
name|ffmpeg-encoder|extension|bitrates|framerates|audioprofile|ffmpeg params|mp4box params
e.g. h264|libx264|.mp4|256k,512k*,768k,1024k|6,12,25*|aac|-g 50 -filter:v yadif|-inter 1000
(trailing * = default selection)

videoMaxWidth

Maximum video width of videos uploaded from Media Converter (in Pixels)

videoMaxHeight

Maximum video height of videos uploaded from Media Converter (in Pixels)

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