Hidden Gem of iOS6: File Uploads in Mobile Safari

http://agileleague.com/2012/10/hidden-gem-of-ios6-file-uploads-in-mobile-safari/

by greenagain • 14 years ago

70 53 14 years ago

agileleague.com

jc4p• 14 years ago

An extremely high hype and looked after feature is a hidden gem, who knew!

dmorgan5• 14 years ago

Can you point us to all this hype?

I didn't know about it and I watched the iOS6 presentation, skimmed through the iPhone 5, iOS 6 apple.com pages, regularly read 2-3 Apple websites + HN, and am a web developer.

ck22• 14 years ago

Yup, input type=file only took them 5 or 6 years to finally implement while Android has had it since 2.0

But since ipad1 can never have ios6, you'll have to do alternative methods for any website service you operate for years to come.

TazeTSchnitzel• 14 years ago

Even Nintendo implemented input type=file for the 3DS.

russtrpkovski• 14 years ago

Apple was probably concerned with the security implications of providing Safari with access to the local file system.

pooriaazimi4• 14 years ago

No, they weren't! They just wanted to force all major websites to create an iOS app as well. Now that there are 750.000+ apps in the App Store, they can give web a long-overdue break.

They still don't give websites access to camera feed (read or frontal), among other things, so you can't use a website to make a video conference.

sanli• 14 years ago

Does anyone know if there is a list somewhere with file input support on different Android devices? Earlier I found this issue and assumed support was sketchy: http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=2519

ck22• 14 years ago

It's plausible some specific carriers have locked specific models but it's also plausible some people posting in that thread were using Android 1.5 back in 2009 - note how the thread was opened in April and closed in October 2009 as "Status: Released"

But even before then there was a trick to using HTTP POST for browser uploads in Android. iPhone could never do that.

Terretta• 14 years ago

The "input type=file" has been handled great on original iphone iOS using the iCab browser, and consistently since as well.

You can use that browser with any version of iOS you like. It was my go-to browser on both iPhone and iPad up until Safari in iOS 6 gained a few of iCab's features. I still use iCab on iPad, however, for the ad blocking.

kmfrk• 14 years ago

"Finally."

duiker101• 14 years ago

Hidden gem? It's more probable it's not disclosed because they are ashamed of public humiliation.

larrydavid• 14 years ago

The were so ashamed that they decided to announce it among other new features in iOS 6 at WWDC this year. No-one pays attention to those silly conferences, especially Apple's.

schappim• 14 years ago

Itself under NDA...

tpowell• 14 years ago

I spent 20 minutes playing with balloonduck.com at the gym the first time because I thought the ability to upload pics from mobile safari was so great. Then I went on with my life.

dutchbrit5• 14 years ago

You can also upload multiple files:

And you can also set an access type:

<input type="file" accept="image/">

lucian1900• 14 years ago

Wait, so you still can't upload something a random app produced?

buster• 14 years ago

That's where Android Intent system shines ;)

My bet that Apple will provide something similar in the future. It's just too good. All that sharing stuff in Android, i really miss it on my iPad, it's imo the biggest feature difference between those two OS today.

pooriaazimi4• 14 years ago

I've been waiting for intents since 4.0 - I still can't believe it's not been added in 6.0.

Maybe iOS 7.0?

dutchbrit5• 14 years ago

Well, you can, if it's an image or a video.

statictype• 14 years ago

Only if the app that produced it sticks it in the Camera Roll.

pooriaazimi4• 14 years ago

... and is saved in the camera roll (not all images are there. for example a drawing app doesn't put its stupid images in your camera roll!)

monsterix• 14 years ago

Perhaps, it's not a hidden gem but a needed pursuit which most of us waited for. I know so many developers who were forced to use third party APIs (picplz etc.) just to have normal web experience on their application.

Anyway, this is good news for the web. Hope the browsers on tablets go beyond their 'mobile' paradigm and there is increase both in horsepower and adoption of web standards.

macchina• 14 years ago

Does anyone know why it took so long to implement such a basic feature?

netcan• 14 years ago

I don't know, but I assume it's because they are (were?) trying to "kill" "files" as a concept users are expected to know about.

dutchbrit5• 14 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if they wanted to force people to create native apps instead of allowing web app file uploading via the browser. Forces extra people to buy a developer license, so more money for Apple. And not to forget, more apps in the store...

ceejayoz• 14 years ago

Unlikely given that iPhone 1 launched with no SDK and Jobs claiming web apps were just as good. That it wasn't in that initial OS was bizarre enough - that it persisted until iOS6 is really odd.

jabo• 14 years ago

Just a guess, but it could be that Jobs didn't approve file uploads all this while, and now Cook and team didn't see why they shouldn't allow file uploads.

hack_edu• 14 years ago

You can upload things, yet have nearly nothing resembling a filesystem accessible to users. How's that work? Do you just use your iCloud or Dropbox files?

ihuman• 14 years ago

You can choose to take a photo/video, or choose one from the camera roll. The standart camera roll view then opens.

_ajm• 14 years ago

You can upload images...but rotation isn't preserved unless they're coming out of the user's Photo Stream bucket.

I think that hidden gem has a couple chips in it.

ndrake• 14 years ago

My favorite hidden gem in iOS6 is the ability to debug webapps with Safari's Web Inspector.

carson• 14 years ago

This is great but sadly you can't resize images in the same version of mobile safari so it limits the usefulness for image uploads. There is a bug that makes large images incorrectly render to a canvas. It seems odd that this wasn't a use case they tested against.

wmblaettler• 14 years ago

It's about time!

hnriot• 14 years ago

I am not sure why this is being touted as a "hidden" gem, it was on the feature list and expounded as much as many of the other features in iOS6.

It is inexcusable that it wasn't previously possible to upload photos to sites (one of what is now the most common use cases for the internet) without involving a native app. The iOS ecosystem struggles to find a middle ground between native and a competitive/competent browser. This feature was no doubt strongly argued by Apple's PMs for many years, but finally they won out over some other dept's PM team.

We should at least be thankful that it wasn't introduced as a Safari-only feature.

The idea that there isn't a file system is nothing more than a suspension of disbelief, of course there's a file-system, it's just that there are folder handlers that know how to render the contents, it's actually an idea that can be traced back (possibly further to other sources also) to Microsoft's active directory notion. It morphed over the years and never became what was originally planned but iOS is very similar in how it 'hides' the underlying architecture. Camera Roll is ~/Photos + Pinterst-like dynamic grid a la Masonry.

dmorgan5• 14 years ago

>I am not sure why this is being touted as a "hidden" gem, it was on the feature list and expounded as much as many of the other features in iOS6.

Because many people don't yet know about it? As if people read the "feature lists"...

>It is inexcusable that it wasn't previously possible to upload photos to sites (one of what is now the most common use cases for the internet) without involving a native app. The iOS ecosystem struggles to find a middle ground between native and a competitive/competent browser. This feature was no doubt strongly argued by Apple's PMs for many years, but finally they won out over some other dept's PM team.

I seriously doubt this conspiracy theory. How about, they just got around to it? It also took Android a version or two to add the same feature -- and Mobile Safari has been more feature complete AND faster than the built-in Android "Browser" for years, so it's not like they tried to stifle mobile apps.

(As a matter of fact, when Jobs touted mobile apps as the way to build applications for the iPhone (pre SDK), people were frothing at the mouth, demanding a native SDK).

>Camera Roll is ~/Photos + Pinterst-like dynamic grid a la Masonry.

Nothing like Masonry, which is all about calculating and presenting images of differing heights in a non uniform grid. This here is just a grid, something ages older than Masonry and/or Pinterest.

r00fus2• 14 years ago

> The idea that there isn't a file system is nothing more than a suspension of disbelief, of course there's a file-system, it's just that there are folder handlers that know how to render the contents

This is both the strength and weakness of iOS and for the most part, it's a benefit to the vast majority of it's main users (ie, not you or me). Have you looked at a non-techie's folder recently? It's a complete nightmare, and without a really good indexer and search system (OSX is ok, Windows sucks, not sure how Linux fares these days) it's nigh impossible for those users to find their saved documents - was that Tomorrow's Picnic Details.xls or did I convert it from the downloaded .csv? Maybe I only preserved it as an attachment that lives in a mail item in my inbox?

Ideas are one thing, execution is another. The fact that file uploads didn't exist forced app developers to be creative in how they managed local storage on iOS - glad the feature is there now, but I can see why Apple didn't include it originally.

rfurmani• 14 years ago

Does anyone know if filepicker.io has plans to support this? Currently file uploading in mobile safari is rather underwhelming

josteink• 14 years ago

If this isn't the ethos of everything Apple I don't know what is: other people have to support Apple. Apple just can't do anything standard or play along nicely with everyone else.

Spoiled brats we used to call them in school.

dmorgan5• 14 years ago

>If this isn't the ethos of everything Apple I don't know what is: other people have to support Apple. Apple just can't do anything standard or play along nicely with everyone else.

You mean like the hundreds of standards they adhere too, from POSIX (OS X is a certified UNIX OS), to all the networking standards, unicode, MIDI, OSC, VPN, ... whatever?

Or several they have released themselves for wider adoption, like the HTML5 Canvas thing, CSS transitions, Webkit, LLVM, Rendevous, etc?

Not even sure what you wrote means...

Hidden Gem of iOS6: File Uploads in Mobile Safari

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