Watermarking images with ASP.NET and the RPC server

The following example is a more advanced application of utilizing the Fireworks RPC server through a web interface. This page allows users to upload and watermark an image.

A .NET code-behind page written in Visual Basic .NET handles the RPC server socket connection as well as the XML calls to the RPC server. These calls tell Fireworks to open the uploaded image file, import a library of predesigned vector graphics for watermarking, place the requested watermark over the image, and then export a new GIF version of the image to a predetermined folder on the server. The user sees a preview of the image in the browser when Fireworks is finished. Depending on the size of the uploaded image and the speed of the computer, this set of operation may take a few seconds.

Important: Before testing or running the .NET sample application, you must have Fireworks 8 installed and open. If the Fireworks application is not open, the .NET application cannot access the Fireworks RPC server to watermark the sample images.

To experiment with or try the sample application, download the ASP.NET sample ZIP file linked to at the beginning of the article, extract the contents, and place it in a folder that is easy to access. There should be two folders. The watermark_dotnet folder contains the ASP.NET web application and web page files. The sample images to upload are located in the sample_uploads folder.

To try out the .NET sample files, you must have a copy of Visual Studio 2005 installed, or else download and install the free Express version from Microsoft. For web development, you need the Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition.

Note: The following instructions are for Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition, but will mostly be the same in Visual Studio 2005.

1. Launch Visual Studio 2005 or the Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition.
2. Select File > Open Web Site and navigate to the watermark_dotnet sample folder.
3. To see a list of the files in the website, choose View > Solution Explorer to open the Solution Explorer in Visual Studio or the Express Edition.
4. Expand the plus sign by the watermark.aspx file. You will see the two main files that contain the code for the web page: the watermark.aspx page that contains the HTML code and ASP tags, and its watermark.aspx.vb code-behind page with the functions for making the RPC server calls (see Figure 5).

5. Double-click the watermark.aspx file to open it.

   

   Figure 5. Expanding the web page files in the Solution Explorer in Visual Studio

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