title: Adding unobtrusive progress bar to old-school file uploads
body: <p>You all know the new generation of fancy, mostly Flash-based file uploaders like <a href="http://www.swfupload.org" rel="noreferrer"><strong>SWFUpload</strong></a> that can show a progress bar while uploading - a great improvement especially for shaky and low-bandwidth connections.</p>
  
  <p>However, these uploaders all bring their own logic of how to handle uploads on the client side. I am looking for an unobtrusive way to "fancify" existing, classical file uploads, i.e. <strong>introducing a progress bar to normal file upload forms</strong>. </p>
  
  <p>Due to the architecture of uploading files, this is most likely not possible without some tweaking on the client side.</p>
  
  <p>I am looking for a solution that keeps the tweaking to an absolute minimum, e.g. a component that adds itself to the onsubmit event of a normal form, performs the file upload, displays a nice progress bar, puts the resulting temporary (server side) file path into the form, and submits it. 
  On the server side, I just have to modify my script to use the file path provided by the flash uploader, instead of $_FILES and consorts, and think about security for a moment.</p>
  
  <p><strong>This is not exactly what all the Flash-based uploaders do: They can use data from a form, but they do not provide possibilities to submit the form as is, what is what I'm looking for. I am looking for a (probably) Flash based upload function taken a step further</strong>.</p>