Plupload - A beautiful file uploader powered by jQuery

I read this comment, went to look at it, and still clicked on the header just because I couldn't believe it wasn't actually a button.

Calling it "not very good" is a lot nicer than it deserves. It makes no sense to sacrifice functionality for "beauty" in a file upload widget. (And it's not like the rest of it is especially nice looking anyway.)

I'm also really kind of wondering why it's so large. It takes up 258180 pixels by default--that's about a third of my browser window. Unless you're putting this on a page that's meant only for file uploading, it's probably going to take up too much room.

The fact that gigantic, non-functional, unwieldy things like this (and TinyMCE, which happens to have been developed by the same people) are considered the best solutions is one of the reasons I've really come to dislike working with the big open-source CMS's.

Is this a form of self-satire? I don't understand what is going on here.

Complexity.

Dropping back to native is thinking about the future rather than supporting the past with tired hacks and stupid browser plugins.

Bit of a negative sentiment - pity. Beautiful is a rather subjective thing. It looks not too shabby and there is the core api if you want to make it look really different. The big thing to me is - it is here NOW, it seems to work in the hodge-podge of browsers I've to support, nicely falling back with decreasing browser smartness. And it uses jquery - which I happen to use as well.

I've an application shipping in a few weeks, which has some minor features which require uploading files. Those are not that often used, so I've not spent much time on the upload part yet - just a basic file-upload form.

Things like this however allow me to make those file-uploads look way nicer (from the point of view of the end-user) with very little time investment from my side. And it allows me to do it NOW. And if I want to be cheap, I can get it even for free! (I know, I know, GPL is not about being cheap, leave the torches at home please ;-).

Given the above, I'm not overly concerned as to how it works out over 3 years from now. I've to ship in 4 weeks. And whatever solution I choose now is not set in stone.

So a big "thanks" for a) putting in the hard work and making the tool in the first place and b) bringing it to my attention.

(having said that: I also tripped over the large plus sign in the header ... - but that is easily modified of course, not a major thing).