Option #1:
Use an applet. Now this may seem like a good idea at first but applets can be complicated and I needed additional information to be submitted with my images. I didn’t want to spend hours customizing a solution in Java using Swing.

Option #2:
Use some cryptic (Action something) Microsoft technology that only works in ASP and internet explorer. I don’t even want to begin on discussing the perils of that decision.

Option #3:
Use a flash component. Again while this might seem like a good solution, modifying a flash component to meet my needs is as difficult as option #1.

Option #4:
Use a Javascript plugin. This is the quickest implementation, however you will only be able to select one image at a time every time a user clicks on the browse button.

Problem:
There are 3 very good options here, the Microsoft one is an extremely terrible idea and should not be attempted. Option #1 and #3 are the most user friendly options but they would require a lot of customization, and a user would be forced to accept a security certificate every time they wanted to upload a file since the software would have to access the users hard disk. Not all web users may be trusting enough to do this. Option #4 is not as aesthetic as the other options and a user would be forced to choose one file at a time, instead of being able select multiple files. A preview would also not be available for every upload, unless the file was pre uploaded to the server but that isn’t a very useful feature. It is possible to do a preview in Internet Explorer by uploading the image to IE’s temporary memory but that doesn’t help me with other browsers.

Solution:
After looking around to see what the big players in the industry are doing, I’ve decided that the best solution is the go with option #4 and eventually offer options #1 or #3 in the future and give users the option to use either. I use JQuery as my JavaScript framework so naturally it would be in my best interest to attempt to find a JQuery plugin. After looking around I have found the JQuery Multiple File Upload Plugin. It’s a very easy plugin to use and it supports a maximum or infinite amount of files. A demo can be seen at the above link.