Is there a way to have an file browser for Flash that allows the user to browse their local machine, view thumbnails of jpgs and other images and upload selected files? This would be like the ActiveX/Java applet that Facebook uses. Any ideas or examples? Thanks!
You can use a FileReference object, which allows the user to browse his filesystem (it pops up the native OS UI control, so if what you want is making the file browser itself, I'm afraid it's not possible, at least in normal swf).
In flash player 10, you can work with local files directly; load the file into the swf, modify it and save it back (it requires user interaction, i.e. a mouse click, and again, it pops up a "save file" native dialog; you can't write the file directly for security reasons). For previous versions, you have to upload the file to a server first and then download it back to be able to modify it.