Nathan CrauseMusings of a Software Developer

I'm throwing down the gauntlet to other language/app developers. For my place of work, I developed a Java Applet for uploading multiple files to a server. Sure, you can do this with other technologies to a certain degree (selecting multiple files at once in Web 2.0 isn't really possible, is it?) but can you do everything I was able to do?

For those of you who wish to take up the challenge, here is the guidelines of what it must be able to do:

1. must be cross-platform (sorry, ActiveX) - this is non-negotiable as other OS's and browsers gain popularity.
2. must be able to select multiple files at once (sorry, DHTML/Web 2.0)
3. must be able to select icon size for the files and at larger sizes (32x32, 64x64 and 128x128) must be able to render a small preview of the file contents.
4. must have a preview pane of the selected file's contents - must support at least HTML and images; optionally SVG regardless of browser (i.e. IE doesn't support SVG natively), ZIP file contents, PDF files, source code (such as rb, php, py, java, etc.)
5. must be able to submit the files (one at a time) to an HTML form (no special server-side script nodes, although these can be supported as an option as my Java Applet does)
6. must be able to report the progress of the file being submitted (not just when the file is finished being sent; i.e. large files must have a working progress bar to show the ongoing progress of the submission instead of the "wait" that standard HTTP has)
7. should support the following 3 mechanisms for adding files to the upload queue:
   1. drag-and-drop
   2. right-click context menu (I already know Flash fails at this one)
   3. "add" button (on a toolbar, as an example)

Unless I'm very much mistaken, Java Applets are the only way of meeting all these requirements. I am open to correction, but please provide a working example (purely to eliminate yourself as a fan-boy). I will be providing a URL to my uploader as soon as it has been approved for production.