[whatwg] Wish: Restrict Image Size on Upload

[Jim Ley]

On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 14:46:08 +1300, Matthew Thomas <mpt at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> Should UAs be able to restrict uploads based on the bit depth of
> images? (For some purposes only 1-bit images are desired.) How about
> based on whether images are animated or not? (Some forums may want
> avatars to be non-animated only.) How about based on the number of
> pages in a PDF or RTF document? (Job application forms may want resumés
> to be no more than /n/ pages.) How about based on the sample rate of
> audio files? Or on the framerate of video files? At what point do you
> say "okay, that's the server's job, not the client's", and why?

At the point where it becomes impossible to convince the UA authors to
implement this stuff.

The whole point of all of the Web Forms stuff is to improve user
experience, by moving more validation etc. to the client.   Stopping
the user from having to needlessly upload large documents does a lot
more to improve user experience, than many of the properties (as these
are just done by script today, so most users don't know there's a
problem.)   The things being described above can't be done, so the
user (who likely doesn't understand about bit-depths and sampling
rates) gets feedback from the UA without having to upload the file
first, which takes time and is frustrating for them.
 
Of course some things are more complicated than others, but since
every visual user agent already deals images, the implementation cost
isn't that high, so it's well worth requesting.

Features that can't be added with script, are the most important
things to add, not stuff that people are already using javascript for,
there's no reason for users stopping using their script.

Jim.