Uploading Images using HTML and ASP

Why should you let visitors upload pictures onto your Web site?

Well lets take a couple of examples. People renting their holiday homes might like to display a picture of the property on a Web site. News sites might like to allow people to send them pictures of events in their area. Ideally we would like the visitor to be able to upload these pictures themselves using their standard Web browser.

Unfortunately images come in thousands of different formats, shapes, colors and sizes; almost none of which will mesh in with your beautifully designed site. This article is about how we can best solve this problem. To do this we will have to search down into the depths of HTML and ASP.

Digging down, the first gem we find is HTML upload. This is based around a standard, but vastly underused, HTML form element. When you put it into a form on a Web page it allows you to choose a file. When you submit the form, the file is sent to the Web server. What could be more perfect?

The second gem we find is the vast range of Active Server Page Extensions that exist on the market. These ActiveX controls add extra functions to the standard Active Server Page repertoire and can be accessed from simple scripting languages such as VBScript. The ASP Extension we will use here is the ImageGoo (http://www.websupergoo.com) Web graphics toolkit as it incorporates everything we need in one package.