I want to create a WebTV site in ASP.NET. At the moment I am thinking of using Flowplayer, serving .flv files. Since it will work with pseudostreaming, IIS will serve various .flv files in a schedule.
Is there a platform/open source package to provide all the clip (and advertisement) scheduling to create the WebTV program? Or do I need to create my own scheduling interface (backend) that will store the .flv schedule in a database, and create e.g. an .aspx that will read the current time and decide which clip to serve?
Or are there any better ideas?
Thanks in advance!
If you want to act like a broadcast channel where all viewers see the same thing at the same time, then you want to use live streaming using flash media server, or some other streaming server that supports live streaming. I'm not aware of any scheduling packages, but I've never looked for them.
If you want to do more of a video on demand idea like youtube or hulu then you could either build that yourself or look at the many web video publishing platforms, like twistage, etc.
Flowplayer has a bunch of off the shelf ad plugins which could be used, it's just a matter of integrating them yourself. I'm not aware of any all-in-one packages that do everything you are asking for - you'll have to put together the pieces yourself.
Related
I would like to provide a link on my web site to download a large file. This should be done with scale in mind. What is best efficient way as of today?
Of course i can do a classic way:
<a href="//download.myserver.com/largefile.zip" title="Download via HTTP" >
The problem with this approach is: i dont want traffic to my server to explode with downloads. So I would rather redirect to external hosting for this large file. What is best way to host this file then?
If you want to avoid download traffic to your server, then I personally suggest using Azure Blob Storage. There is lots of documentation and client libraries for .Net. It removes download traffic from your site and the security concerns of hosting files and moves them to the Azure cloud which is very secure to say the least.
If you want the files to be publicly available to anyone, then make a public container, get the url of the file you want and place it in the anchor tag, otherwise you may need to familiarise yourself with the blob leasing (plenty of documentation too). Though like most things it is not free. The silver lining is you only pay for what you use.
You can get started here.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/blobs/storage-quickstart-blobs-dotnet
Disclaimer,
I do not work for Microsoft, nor I do not benefit form this. This is just a personal opinion based on previous experiences and projects.
I've done a good bit of research to find an upload component for .NET that I can use to upload large files, has a progress bar, and can resume the upload of large files. I've come across some components like AjaxUploader, SlickUpload, and PowUpload, to name a few. Each of these options cost money and only PowUpload does the resumable upload, but it does it with a java applet. I'm willing to pay for a component that does those things well, but if I could write it myself that would be best.
I have two questions:
Is it possible to resume a file upload on the client without using flash/java/Silverlight?
Does anyone have some code or a link to an article that explains how to write a .NET HTTPHandler that will allow streaming upload and an ajax progress bar?
Thank you,
Austin
[Edit]
I realized I do need to be able to do resumable file uploads for my project, any suggestions for components that can do that?
1) Is it possible to resume a file upload on the client without using flash/java/Silverlight?
No. The actual HTTP protocol itself does not support resume of partial uploads, so even if you did use flash or silverlight, you'd still need to use something else like FTP on the server.
I've "solved" this problem in the past by writing a custom client application in C# which broke the file down into small chunks (2meg), transmitted those separately, and then the server combines them all back together.
2) Does anyone have some code or a link to an article that explains how to write a .NET HTTPHandler that will allow streaming upload and an ajax progress bar?
While this doesn't solve the 'resume' problem, I've used SWFUpload on the client side and it worked brilliantly. It provides a smart file browser (where you can prompt the user for only jpeg files, etc) and upload progress tracking, all without needing to modify your server at all.
It's not possible to resume an upload using standard HTML file input control, because the whole file gets submitted with the HTTP request.
I've used NeatUpload in the past, which gives you a progress bar. It's under an LGPL license, so you don't need to pay for it and it's open source.
Nothing more to add about the resume problem.
I used (and keep on using) telerik radUpload and I am quite satisfied with it
(it can even be used in medium trust mode which was quite important for me). The only problem I had (and was not able to fix) is to upload files bigger than 2GB...
SlickUpload is pretty solid and a lot of big companies use it from what the site says.
This is probably too late for your project, but POW Upload have now implemented auto resume upload in their new version. We're about to implement it on our site.
I need to build a website that can be downloaded to a CD.
I'd like to use some CMS (wordpress,Kentico, MojoPortal) to setup my site, and then download it to a cd.
There are many program that know how to download a website to a local drive, but how to make the search work is beyond my understanding.
Any idea???
The project is supposed to be an index of Local community services, for communities without proper internet connection.
If you need to make something that can be viewed from a CD, the best approach is to use only HTML.
WordPress, for example, needs Apache and MySQL to run. And although somebody can "install" the website on his own computer if you supply the content via a CD, most of your users will not be knowledgeable enough to do this task.
Assuming you are just after the content of the site .. in general you should be able to find a tool to "crawl" or mirror most sites and create an offline version that can be burned on a CD (for example, using wget).
This will not produce offline versions of application functionality like search or login, so you would need to design your site with those limitations in mind.
For example:
Make sure your site can be fully navigated without JavaScript (most "crawl" tools will discover pages by following links in the html and will have limited or no JavaScript support).
Include some pages which are directory listings of resources on the site (rather than relying on a search).
Possibly implement your search using a client-side technology like JavaScript that would work offline as well.
Use relative html links for images/javascript, and between pages. The tool you use to create the offline version of the site should ideally be able to rewrite/correct internal links for the site, but it would be best to minimise any need to do so.
Another approach you could consider is distributing using a clientside wiki format, such as TiddlyWiki.
Blurb from the TiddlyWiki site:
TiddlyWiki allows anyone to create personal SelfContained hypertext
documents that can be published to a WebServer, sent by email,
stored in a DropBox or kept on a USB thumb drive to make a WikiOnAStick.
I think you need to clarify what you would like be downloaded to the CD. As Stennie said, you could download the content and anything else you would need to create the site either with a "crawler" or TiddlyWiki, but otherwise I think what you're wanting to develop is actually an application, in which case you would need to do more development than what standard CMS packages would provide. I'm not happy to, but would suggest you look into something like the SalesForce platform. Its a cloud based platform that may facilitate what you're really working towards.
You could create the working CMS on a small web/db server image using VirtualBox and put the virtual disk in a downloadable place. The end user would need the VirtualBox client (free!) and the downloaded virtual disk, but you could configure it to run with minimal effort for the creation, deployment and running phases.
We need to develop an application to sell music online. No need to specify that all will be done quite legally and in so doing, we have to plan an interface to pay artists. However, we are confronted with a question: What is the best way to store music on the server? Should we save it on server's disk from a HTTP fileupload? Should we save via FTP or would it be wiser to save it in the database? No need to say that we need it to be the most safiest as possible. So maybe an https is required here. But, we what you think is the best way? Maybe other idea? Because in all HTTP case, upload songs (for administration) is quite long and boring, but easly linkable to a song that admin create in his web application comparativly to an FTP application to upload song on server and then list directory in admin part to link the correct uploaded song to the song informations in database.
I know that its maybe not quite clear, it's because i'm french but tell me and I will try to explain part that you don't understand.
I've used Krystalware's SlickUpload ASP.NET control in the past to take care of the uploading part for you (you can use the in built control if you want to but this has a lot of the nifty ajax-style features done for you and is quite cheap).
Edit:
[I would not advocate storing the music file itself in the database. Much better [in my humble opinion] only to store the location of the file in the database. If you use one of the cloud services listed below then the location might simply be an HTTP link]
I'd also seriously consider using a cloud storage service for storing the music files. Something like Amazon S3 or Rackspace Cloud Files. CloudFiles is good because, if you wish, you can also enable CDN delivery (Content Delivery Network) which means your users can access the uploaded music tracks much faster than if served off your local web server, for instance.
Hope this helps,
Richard.
I'm tasked with writing an application for placing and connecting objects (sort of like a room planner where you can place furniture). I've made a demo using Flash Builder 4 and built it for AIR as a desktop app. Now the client wants the full app, but they and I am unsure whether to continue building it as an AIR app or transform it to a web application using Flex. I tried making a simple conversion of the AIR app to a web app, and most things worked but not all. The things that don't work seem to be simple bugs, though, not complete lack of capability.
The capabilities that I'm going to need (except for the modelling) are:
Printing of the finished image + a list of the furniture that has been placed
A way to save and retrieve finished plans
A way to export the list of furniture to Excel format
Handling a whole slew of data about the different objects
Only the printing has been implemented so far, and seems to work in the web app as well.
What advantages/disadvantages are there with the two approaches? Are any of the capabilities I need much worse (or even impossible) to implement in either approach?
Edit: Thanks all for your answers. From them, and my own research, I came up with the following:
Web app
Advantages
Accessible, no need for installing software
Easy to keep up to date
Disadvantages
Requires Flash 10 (for saving files)
Requires a web server to serve content
Sligthly longer development time (from where I am right now)
Requires an internet connection to work
Lots of data transport, may be slow on a slow network
Desktop AIR app
Advantages
Slightly faster development time (from where I am right now)
No web server necessary
Can be used while not connected to the internet
All data is local and faster to load
Disadvantages
Requires the Adobe AIR runtime + a separate installation of the program
Updates need to be distributed to all users and an admin needs to install them
There is no one straight answer for this one. A few points to consider:
If you want to use specific AIR features like offline usage, integration with the user's OS etc, you should use AIR (of course)
Flex applications are more easy to distribute and upgrade, because everyone uses the same swf instance from the server. When using a server backend with AIR, you should be aware of possible backwards compatibility issues when upgrading you application.
There are a lot of little differences, but in broad strokes, the only considerations you have to think about are:
Does it need to be on the Web?
Does it need file system access.
If (1) then use regular Flash. If (2) then use AIR.
The biggest disadvantage is related to the update model - you need to be a super user in order to update the air application - especially in enterprise the users of the AIR applications don't have rights to update it. If your application is running in the browser you do not have this issue.
Besides that, I do not see any disadvantage.
Check out flash 10 FileReference you can let users save results easily to their local file system. I've used it to create PDF's and let the user save that for printing.
For the PDF side I used Alive PDF.
protected function PrintCard(event:MouseEvent):void
{
//ShowHideBorders();
var printPDF:PDF = new PDF( Orientation.LANDSCAPE, Unit.MM, Size.LETTER );
printPDF.setDisplayMode( Display.FULL_WIDTH, Layout.SINGLE_PAGE );
printPDF.addPage();
printPDF.addImage(CardPanel);
var fileRef:FileReference = new FileReference();
fileRef.save(printPDF.save(Method.LOCAL), "card.pdf"); // Sends the file to the USER
//ShowHideBorders();
}