title: Accessing Local Files with jQuery
body: <p>I believe that this question has been asked in a few different forms, but I've read quite a few different responses. </p>
  
  <p>At first, I had a web-application written with mostly jQuery that would make use of servlets to retrieve information from various locations JavaScript could not access (ie. Feeds, images from a server, etc.). Now, however, I've been told to do away with the servlets and application configuration classes so that this project of mine contains only HTML, CSS, and JavaScript/jQuery. Rather than pulling the images off of the server, I need to retrieve them from a local file on the computer. I know that allowing this might seem like terrible design, but it's what I've been asked to do. At any rate, what I really need to do is count the number of image files in a directory and then perhaps compile an array of the filenames themselves. I could do this fine in Java when using the servlets, but without them, I'm not sure how or even if this can be done.</p>
  
  <p>I'm basically trying to use the jQuery Cycle plug-in to cycle through these images like a slideshow. I inject (or $("#div").append()) these images into the div by using a loop based on the number of images present. </p>
  
  <p>So, is there a way I can do this with using JavaScript, HTML, jQuery plug-in, etc? I'd like to avoid using PHP and Java at this point...</p>