With the S3Browse website you can easily upload files to a S3 bucket. No software needs to be installed on the client PC. A web browser is all you need. To get started, you need an Amazon AWS account that is enabled for use of the Simple Storage Service (S3). You can upload files to one of your own buckets or to a bucket owned by somebody else. Of course, that person needs to authorize you for writing to that bucket.

Advantages of uploading using the browser are both simplicity and the fact that no additional software is required. However, the user interface is clumsy for uploading lots of files and not very efficient when uploading large ones. (because of S3Browse being the trusted man-in-the-middle).

For uploading lots of files or files larger than 25 MB, S3Browse offers a better solution: The S3Browse Upload Client (S3UC). This is a Java based client application that allows you to upload large amounts of data directly to the Amazon S3 servers.

See the post “Uploading using the S3Browse Upload Client” for an explanation of the S3Browse Upload Client. This post will guide you through the Web Upload functionality of S3Browse.

The following steps explain how this process works:

• Sign in at S3Browse.com. All the buckets you own will be listed on the homepage. You can select one or you can create a new bucket. If you want to upload to a bucket that is not owned by you, you can add that bucket to your list by using the link “Add Other Bucket”.
  
• Clicking on a bucket link will open an explorer page for that bucket. The explorer lets you browse through the content of a bucket. At the top of the table is a “Web Upload” link. This link will take you to entry form page. Select one or more files to upload.
  
• Optionally you can specify a prefix/path if you want to organize your file using a directory like structure.
  
• If you want to store the uploads using the same file names and you don’t need to specify extra meta-data then you can select the processing option “Send the files directly to the Amazon S3”. Otherwise select the other option, this will allow you to change the file names and meta-data.
  
• Once you press the submit button the upload to the S3Browse server will start. Depending on your bandwidth and the file sizes this may take a while. A progress bar at the bottom shows how much time is to remain. At the end of this step, your files reside in a temporary folder on the S3Browse server.
  
• If you selected to send the files directly you will now see the Upload Progress view. Your files are uploaded from the S3Browse server to Amazon S3 in a background process. This view show the progress of that process. It is not neccesary to wait for the uploads to finish. You can always return to the Upload Progress view via the menu option "View Upload Progress".
  
• The optional second step of a Web Upload is changing the file and meta-data. In the current beta version (0.9) of S3Browse, the only meta-data you can change is the Content-Type. Future version will allow you to add other meta-data. After you press the Submit button you will see the Upload Progress view discussed in the previous bullit.
  
• Once the files have been transferred to Amazon S3, the local copies on the S3Browse server will be deleted automatically. This will also happen in case you cancel the upload.

Hopefully this post made it clear how and when to use the Web Upload functionality of S3Browse. Remember that we also offer a client based upload to S3 which is a better option when handling large files.

Please let us know if you still have questions. If you have ideas on how we can improve our service we would also like to hear from you.

Posted by S3Browse Team on 2007-03-29 13:15

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2 COMMENTS:

Anonymous said...

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2008-04-01 06:58

Anonymous said...

The certificate of S3UC is invalid, so i cannot run it ...

2007-05-18 18:22

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