Designing with Progressive Enhancement: Building the Web that Works for Everyone

Chapter Nineteen. File Input

As websites expand their content-sharing and collaboration features, users are electing to upload files—photos, videos, documents, even secure data—and store them via web applications in “cloud”-based systems instead of locally on their own computers. Common applications that rely on file uploading from a web browser include photo or video sharing sites like Flickr or YouTube, social networking sites like Facebook, and web-based productivity suites like Google Docs.

Conveniently, HTML provides a native form control to access local files: a standard input element with the type set to file. The file input renders with a text field for feedback and a button that launches a standard operating-system dialog box to allow ...