Fully Blown

I had a strange problem appear the other day, i have an asp.net form that allows users to upload images of broken down machines in the field. This program worked great until someone tried uploading a 5MB file. Turns out the errors given by IE and FF are pretty much useless to try and figure out what is causing this, both browsers give a generic "fuck you" error message. The IIS logs just add a little insult to injury too. But it turns out its a simple parameter in machine.config the parameter is "MAXREQUESTLENGTH" by default this value is 4096K (4MB), changing this bad boy to anything above that and 5MB image upload works like a champ. Although set the setting too high and people will abuse. Also anybody out there buying a "58,000 megapixel " digital camera to take a picture of a flat tire, do yourself and everybody else a favour and set the damn picture size (I purposfully avoided the term "Quality" because picture size and quality are too different animals) down to a reasonable size. For your average picture, that you will be emailing to friends setting your camera's resultion down to 400 x284 pixels by 24 million colours will result in a good picture quality (although you won't get good enlargement capabilities) and good physical file size, that is good for email and web use.