Question

Context:

I setup a photo upload that uses an iframe to upload the image, then that has an optional jCrop step.

the client doesn’t want to have to wait for the image to be uploaded. here’s what the client said:

"You shouldn't have to wait for anything on the server end. 
I don't care if the cropping happens on the server or client. 
The interaction for cropping shouldn't wait on upload"

Is the client crazy, or is there some kind of way for me to have the image available for front-end manipulation instantly?

Edit:

TLDR: using a <input type="file"/>, if a user picks an image, can I immediately reference that local file somehow? would that show up as the input’s value after change?

Answer 1

I can think of three technics to do a browser based image manipulation possible:
– java applet
– flash
– html5: file api (to read the image) and canvas (to show and manipulate it). But the browser support for the file api is not quite good as far as I know.