Use of applet unwise?

N

Nick Mirro

We are trying to decide if adding a java applet to our java site is a good
idea. Please provide any opinions. We are providing an online image
processing utility. It will interconvert formats (tif, png, jpg) and will
resample and crop.


The difficult part is enabling image cropping with a fixed (1:1.5) aspect
ratio.

Applet allows user to apply cropping in a user-friendly way, e.g. move
cropping area with mouse, reload original image, etc. All the changes being
made locally. Using http tunnelling applet will send pending changes to
server side and apply them to a temporary image.


One of our developer's assessments:

Pros:
- Allows rich/dynamic UI (e.g. drag crop rectangle)
- Can perform arbitrary functions on lient side, of course with respect to
security policies
- Whith http tunneling it is possible to call server-side functions
- Not browser-specific

Cons:
- Generally requires java on server for server-side communication (not an
issue in this case)
- UI takes more efforts to develop than with regular HTML
- Require users to install Java Plugin if they dont have one
- As a client-server module, requires additional efforts in establishing
developent/debug environment.

Nick
 
T

Travis Newbury

Nick said:
We are trying to decide if adding a java applet to our java site is a good
idea.

Prety simple actually. Can you accomlish the same task without it?
 
D

David Dorward

Nick said:
We are trying to decide if adding a java applet
The difficult part is enabling image cropping with a fixed (1:1.5) aspect
ratio.

You might want to take a look at:

http://koivi.com/image-crop-selection/

I've hacked it to allow the user to start in any corner (then I
submitted the patch to the author only to discover he had already done
that in the (currently unpublished) development version), and to fix
the aspect ratio. (I've also set it to output the coords to a form
rather then keeping them in JavaScript as I plan to stick a few other
options in there and use it as part of my CMS).

http://dorward.me.uk/tmp/test_image/

It doesn't do everything you want (at least not yet), but it is
JavaScript based, so you don't need to get people to install any
plugins (they do need to be using a compatable browser, I've only tried
in in Firefox).
 
N

Nick Mirro

Thanks for showing me this site. I have forwarded the url to our developer.
I think we will give the users an option of either an applet or a javascript
utility like this.

I cannot tell from the site's utility. Is it possible to somehow select and
set a fixed aspect ratio? We use only 1:1.5 and 1.5:1.

Nick
 
D

David Dorward

Nick said:
I cannot tell from the site's utility. Is it possible to
somehow select and set a fixed aspect ratio? We use only
1:1.5 and 1.5:1.

The original? No.

My hacked version?

- thats a "Yes", but the ratio (1:1) is (currently) hard coded into the
script.

I'm planning to extend it to allow the user to specify an aspect ratio,
and once I do then I'll submit a patch to the author.
 

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