How I can access resources of local filesystem and manipulate them from browser

Question

I need a technology to:

a) From the a browser, a web page, browse to the user filesystem (with his authorization)
b) Let user select a folder and search for images
c) The folder can contain huge jpg images (up to 20Mb)
d) show a resized version, very tiny version, of the founded images inside the browser
e) play with the thumbnail (reorder, rename, associate some options), interacting with the web pages
f) let the user select which image will be uploaded g) when finished upload all the huge original file size

I cannot use external client.
No problem for plugins.

Is there a technology out there capable to do this ?

I've decided to try to implement in Java all the "local code" (the folder and image selection, thumbnail creation) and pass thumbnail to the server. With an Ajax application pass the thumbnail to the web page where the applet reside and let the user interact with the thumbnail. At the end try to recall the applet to upload the original files.

Are there technological alternatives to this approach in your point of view ?

Answer 1

Since you're already up on Java technologies, if you're happy to require that the end user have Java I'd go with a signed Java applet. You can use Java Advanced Imaging (JAI) for the image manipulation.