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Uploading a file in the browser is something that most of us take for granted. Whether its attaching a file in a web-based e-mail program or updating your Facebook profile pic, it’s something we do nearly every day.

Technically speaking, there is a bit more to it than that, but luckily for us web developers it just sort of happens, you pop an <input type=”file” /> tag into your HTML and the file magically appears on your web server in a spot that’s not too difficult to find.

The problem is that the traditional browser upload is very limiting. What if I want to attach 20 pictures to the same e-mail? Or, how about getting a progress bar for those larger uploads? If the upload fails how do I know what went wrong?

Well, recently we’ve been seeing a solution, use Flash. The FileReference object in ActionScript can do all of these things. And, yeah, it’ll work just fine, but wouldn’t it be convenient if browsers could just handle these things naturally?

Short answer: yes. And the W3C thinks so too as they are in the process of compiling a File API. From the looks of things accessing file information before anything has been transferred to the server will become trivial.

However, if you read a bit deeper into things, you’ll see this provides for a much deeper browser integration with your computer’s file system. The ability for the browser to read (and perhaps write) file data directly to/from the end-user’s machine is in the works here.

With such features we will greatly advance the strength and possibilities of web applications. Things like Google Gears, as cool as they are, won’t be necessary because the browser will handle it on its own.

Our blog has been pretty quiet for the last month due to the fact that we’ve been pretty busy. It all came together last week as we saw the launch of four different client sites. Here’s a brief rundown of what we’ve been working on:

Columbus College of Art & Design

www.ccad.edu
We spent the last several months working with CCAD to completely re-orchestrate their website. Starting with web strategy and new architecture, designing the concept and the user experience, and finishing with web standards programming, we delivered the complete package. Our developers even got their hands dirty with a custom designed, AJAX-driven calendar integrated with the Google Calendar Data API.

CATCO

www.catco.org
CATCO is place to go for live theatre in Columbus. We worked closely with the people at CATCO to provide the online destination for information their organization and shows they put on each season. After many hours executing strategy & IA, concept design, UXD, and web standards programming we launched their new site. We had so much fun working on the project we even volunteered to help them promote the new site at Gallery Hop last weekend.

CallCopy

www.callcopy.com
Call recoding software specialist CallCopy came to us looking for a sleek redesign of their website as well as some guidance on navigation and architecture. After the first week of having the new site live we’ve heard reports that the new site has already yielded an increased conversion rate.

The Ohio State University Medical Center: CITIH

citih.osumc.edu
The Ohio State University Medical Center came to us looking for design and development of a microsite for its Center for IT Innovations in Healthcare (CITIH). This one had a tight timeline but we rolled it out in time for them to start accepting registrants for their summit Leveraging Federal Stimulus Funding for Healthcare IT Innovation.

Oh yeah, these are also the first four clients running the new version of the dynamIt Content Management System (dCMS). We launched that in July too.