[whatwg] File Upload Progress Event (Upload Progress)

[Roger Hågensen]

  On 2010-09-20 10:16, Olli Pettay wrote:
>>
>>> I do think browser UI for large uploads is terrible and needs to
>>> be fixed.
>>
>> I agree!
>
> Yeah, the UI is terrible, but that is about browser implementations and
> not about any specification.

Well! There is nothing preventing the specs from providing a minimum UI 
guideline that should be followed by UAs.

Heck, MicroSoft has huge Styleguides on how to do UI stuff that 
developers should follow.
I do not see why the HTML specs can't provide similar guidelines.

Now if a UA has what they believe are a better UI then that's fine, but 
as a minimum they should at least implement the minimum UI as outlined 
in the specs for example.
This way all UIs for HTML will have a common baseline, which can only 
improve usability for the users, which is the key point regardless right?.

So things like upload/download and <video>/<audio> etc. really should 
have a guideline to ensure a baseline UI that is consistent for user.

So a form submission if it takes too long (a guideline for what "too 
long" is should also be specced  as an advisory) should provide a 
progress report either in the form of a progress bar or ETA or a 
combination of the two, and the should support the ability to let the user
pause/continue (that depends on server features I guess) or even abort.

If this is clarified then maybe we wont need a dozen different 
"uploaders" that may or may not work in this or that browser.
I've seen web form uploading, flash based uploading, java based 
uploading, javascript based uploading, or even browser plugins,
I think the browser could do the uploading better and more safely,
thus the other methods can be used as fallback for older browsers or 
alternatives in case the user prefers using one of them instead of the 
built-in implementation.

There's an old saying, "if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right", 
downloading has gotten a lot better, heck Opera supports .torrents which 
is brilliant if a website provides webseeds as an alternative to just a 
direct download,
uploading is really shaky, I Google Chrome actually has a upload 
progress, Firefox does not (or rather it does bit it's broken?)

Interesting read 
http://michaelkimsal.com/blog/why-do-browsers-still-not-have-file-upload-progress-meters/
Some of the comments might be worth looking over too.
Firefox upload progress bug 
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=249338

I think what Google Chrome does is adequate. I haven't tested multiple 
uploads at the same time, but am I right in assuming that the upload 
progressbar in Chrome is "per page" ?
So that the user could do uploads to two different sites and flick 
between tabs to check the progress?
What I haven't noticed Chrome having is a upload overview window, so 
that you could see the progress of all current uploads, similar to how 
you can see all current downloads in say Firefox.

I've also missed the ability of being able to "queue" downloads (and 
uploads), usually the darn browser tries to download everything at once, 
being able to set a max simultaneous "file"  limit for downloads and 
uploads.

Using the search terms: browser upload progress bar
gives over a million hits on both Google and Bing.
the terms: upload progress bar
gives around half a million hits.

And the first few pages are all pretty much about showing progress while 
uploading files with the browser, with various solutions.

I know how painfull it is to upload stuff without a progress. I recently 
released 3 albums on indieTorrent.org and their old (current) upload 
uses a basic HTML form.
Luckily they advised  using Chrome since it showed upload progress (this 
was first time I discovered Chrome had this), which let me stay sane as 
I uploaded 58 audio tracks in lossless FLAC format.
I can't even imagine how frustrating it would be to upload a huge video 
file with a normal upload form and no progress info.

So Chrome has upload progress, Firefox has a broken one, what does 
current/upcoming IE, Opera and Safari browsers have?

-- 
Roger "Rescator" Hågensen.
Freelancer - http://EmSai.net/