Multi-file upload in the Flickr and Gmail house Category: Showcase
I saw two posts at the same time on the topic of multiple-file uploading from a Web app which is a topic that we have covered many times before.
This time we have our good friend Scott Schiller posting on the Flickr uploader. He details the user experience from file selection, to progress, to completion, and then delves into the technical details including the Flash 10 changes:
Due to a change in the security model beginning with Flash 10, file selection must now begin via the user clicking directly on the Flash movie. With previous versions, you could call [Flash movie].selectFiles() from JavaScript and the selection dialog would be shown without requiring user action.
To keep the user experience consistent on Flickr where an HTML link could trigger the selection dialog, we made the Flash movie transparent and overlaid it on top of the HTML link. Thus, the Flash movie captures the click and the selection dialog works as expected. One might call this a legitimate, local form of clickjacking.
If repositioning the Flash movie is undesirable in your use case, another option is to render the link, text or button UI within the Flash movie itself and show the movie as a normal inline element.
Then, Gmail finally launched multifile uploading and people will rejoice.
It, as most of these things do, uses Flash:
This is the pragmatic choice, even though Gears has nice support. Time for browsers to step up!
