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Whenever a website has an input field for specifying and uploading a local file, the browser also lets you specify a URL instead. The browser tricks the server that you're uploading a local file by downloading the URL destination bytes, then immediately forwarding the content to the page you are submitting.
Benefit: no need to download a file locally that you aren't interested in keeping track of.
HB Question Category
HB_20Question_20Category A lot of people seeking answers these days... [Jinbish, Sep 17 2009]
Face animator
http://labs.mppark.jp/hige/ [Dub, Sep 17 2009]
BIS Celeb Face
http://images.googl...mgsz=m&imgtype=face Pic a smallish file, get the URI to the (jpg) image (<5Mb), Click "Change" paste URI [Dub, Sep 17 2009]
<Input type="file" >
http://www.htmlcode...NPUT_TYPE_FILE.html This is the scenario I was thinking of. An input field for specifying a local file. [rhatta, Sep 17 2009]
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It would be better if this were done at the protocol level; the POST statement could contain a header to redirect the receiving server to do a download. Stupid to download and upload! |
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Some sites have a feature to allow a URL to be specified instead of a filename. The only way I can see a browser feature for that as being useful would be if the browser were connected to a proxy through a slow link and the proxy (which was connected to the net via faster link) could handle the exchange. For non-secure connections, that might allow things to operate more quickly, but I'm not sure how it should work with secure ones. |
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Isn't this already baked in Windows using "Network Places"? |
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@supercat: yes, some sites allow you to specify a URL. This
idea is meant to be useful for sites that don't. |
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@MisterQEQ: that's unrelated... |
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Erm, If I understand correctly, I think this already works/baked (at least on XP). I did it in fact with a face animator (linky) and a picture of a celebrity I found on GIS.
I think what happens is that XP downloads the file to a temp locaion on the local machine, then passes the file-spec to the site to upload. Probably depends on the calling params of the "open file" method /func |
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@Dub: Hmm, I'll give it a try once I get to a Windows
machine. Do you just paste the URL into the File Chooser
Dialog? |
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[rhatta] yup - URL of an image [http://vision.stanford.edu/ projects/OPTIMOL/ main/face.jpg] |
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@Dub: Cool! Thanks for noticing it! I should check out
Windows next time I post. Implemented rather unintuitively
however, I would say. Couldn't do the same in OS X. 'Tis
baked. |
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Yes, you're right, it doesn't work on OSX :( |
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[21 Quest] Who are you asking? |
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feed the website a link to itself, so it just keeps downloading nested copies of itself over and over. |
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Ah [sninctown] Nooooo! You'll break the internet! Didn't you see "IT Crowd"? |
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No, it isn't - not from the author's point of view. They're not a windows user and didn't know about the feature there; that just came out through the discussion here. |
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This wouldn't just be 'advocacy' or 'consumer advice' if the idea were extended to have a proxy site that could handle such requests (e.g. a user with a slow connection accesses a site via proxy site filemoverproxy.com, which sees the 'INPUT_TYPE_FILE' field and allows a user to specify a URL; the proxy site than fetches the file and passes it on, without the file going over the user's slow link). |
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