We have a regular HTML5 document, which includes our stylesheet and script.js file, the Filedrop plugin and the jQuery library. The markup of our Upload Center couldn't be simpler. A simple fallback solution for older browsers would be to display a regular file input dialog, but we won't be doing this today, as we will be focusing our attention on using HTML5. One of them is Filedrop, which is a wrapper around this functionality, and provides features for limiting maximum file size and specifying callback functions, which is really handy for integrating it into your web applications.Ĭurrently file uploads work only in Firefox and Chrome, but upcoming major versions of the other browsers also include support for it. Fortunately, there are jQuery plugins that can do this for us. Sounds complicated? Yes, it could use some optimization. We use the new sendAsBinary method of the XMLHttpRequest object, and send the file data to the server.Using the File Reader API, we read the files in the list as binary data, and store them in memory.Browsers that support the Drag & Drop API will fire an event, which alongside other useful information, contains a list of files that were dropped The user drops one or more files from their file system to the browser window by dragging.Here is a description of a HTML5 file upload process: Uploading files using HTML5 is actually a combination of three technologies - the new File Reader API, the also new Drag & Drop API, and the good ol' AJAX (with the addition of binary data transfer). Currently, the photos are only stored in a folder on the server, but you could improve it any way you like. The photos will have a preview and a progress bar, all of which controlled on the client side.

Today we will be developing a small web application called Upload Center, that will allow people to upload photos from their computers by dragging and dropping them onto the browser window, possible with the new HTML5 APIs exposed by modern browsers.

Jquery file upload example