

Facebook: Building a Better Photo Uploader - lordgilman
http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=178492968919

======
dtf
About bloody time! I'm amazed it's taken them this long to do something about
that awful photo uploader, when photos are surely one of their killer apps.
The number of (unanswered) complaints on their forum about this issue must run
into tens of thousands.

But did it seriously require a complete rewrite instead of just fixing that
woefully buggy Java applet? And could they really not have achieved this new
implementation with Gears or YBP? They're rather vague on what was missing
from those plugins, and I remember Google stating that they supported decent
file upload functionality (including drag and drop) just fine.

~~~
liuliu
My guess is the preview. Other plugins seem less concern about preview files.

~~~
diN0bot
interesting. i use a mac. do other operating systems not show previews while
browsing for files?

------
lecha
Interesting approach. They have built a UI-less browser plugin that exposes
new javascript API to your web app.

That gets me thinking about other possible browser plugins along those lines:
\- Expose the native filesystem \- Fire an event when a USB device is
connected \- Or when email is received ...

~~~
abstractbill
I have a working browser plugin that allows justin.tv to access and respond to
the Apple Remote Control. I should really find time to get it polished and
released...

NPAPI plugins are actually pretty good fun to write.

------
motters
The photo uploader on facebook has always been lame, taking ages to load and
often crashing. It's a classic case of over-engineering. I've always ended up
using the simplified uploader, which is much more straightforward.

------
timmaah
Why did they decide to have it use the modal window? I can't see a full two
rows of photos.

------
Tichy
But that's cheating...

~~~
chime
I thought the same thing actually. If you're going to make a plugin then it
might as well be a full-blown app. I thought this post was going to be about a
better uploader made in JS/HTML5 or something. Dropbox has a very good
uploader. Now that Facebook runs the entire site on Ajax, they could
relatively easily make a Flash/JS uploader like Dropbox while making sure the
user can surf around the site.

------
JimBastard
The photo uploader is the first step towards them taking over the browser
completely. They will trick users into using this and start dark testing new
features, over time they will replace the majority of the browser's built-in
rendering engine.

Nothing like being able to execute arbitrary x86 code through the browser....

