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Hidden Gem of iOS6: File Uploads in Mobile Safari

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Re: Hidden Gem of iOS6: File Uploads in Mobile Safari

#41

Post by drivebyacct2 »

mikeklaas wrote: post #40
pooriaazimi wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, the shipped the best and most performant mobile browser for years, but omitted one small feature that no-one has implemented well for nefarious purposes.

What OS/DE does not have a toolkit just for creating File Open dialogs?

Re: Hidden Gem of iOS6: File Uploads in Mobile Safari

#43

Post by josteink »

rfurmani wrote: post #35

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

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.

Re: Hidden Gem of iOS6: File Uploads in Mobile Safari

#44

Post by dmorgan »

hnriot wrote: post #30

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 brow…

>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.

Re: Hidden Gem of iOS6: File Uploads in Mobile Safari

#45

Post by dmorgan »

pooriaazimi wrote: post #23
russtrpkovski wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

>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.

And they will NOT do it until the battery, CPU power et al are there to support it running on the browser in the way a random website wants to handle it.

Re: Hidden Gem of iOS6: File Uploads in Mobile Safari

#46

Post by dmorgan »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #41
mikeklaas wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the shipped the best and most performant mobile browser for years, but omitted one small feature that no-one has implemented well for nefarious purposes.

What OS/DE does not have a toolkit just for creating File Open dialogs?

Android didn't have it at first too. What other mobile OS matters?

Re: Hidden Gem of iOS6: File Uploads in Mobile Safari

#47

Post by dmorgan »

jc4p wrote: post #2

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

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.

Re: Hidden Gem of iOS6: File Uploads in Mobile Safari

#48

Post by dmorgan »

josteink wrote: post #43
rfurmani wrote: post #35

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

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.

>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...

Re: Hidden Gem of iOS6: File Uploads in Mobile Safari

#49

Post by r00fus »

hnriot wrote: post #30

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 brow…

> 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.

Re: Hidden Gem of iOS6: File Uploads in Mobile Safari

#50

Post by erichocean »

pooriaazimi wrote: post #27
buster wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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?

Apple is now using their own "intents" system (XPC Services[1]) internally in iOS 6.0, so it seems reasonable for it to arrive in a later version.

One major benefit is that Apple will be able to support JIT'd WebViews outside of Mobile Safari, without a privilege escalation.

[1] http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/MacOSX...

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