File Input accept Attribute
The HTML5 revolution provided us several simple but important attributes like download, autofocus, required, novalidate, and placeholder. There's another one you may want to know about: accept. The accept attribute is useful for input[type=file] elements. Let's have a look at it!
The HTML
I'll use Twitter's upload button to illustrate a good usage of the accept attribute:
<input type="file" name="media_empty" accept="image/gif,image/jpeg,image/jpg,image/png,">
The accept attribute gets a comma-separated list of mime types for files desired file types. In this case, Twitter is allowing the user to upload common image formats.
![Vibration API]()
Many of the new APIs provided to us by browser vendors are more targeted toward the mobile user than the desktop user. One of those simple APIs the Vibration API. The Vibration API allows developers to direct the device, using JavaScript, to vibrate in...
![Serving Fonts from CDN]()
For maximum performance, we all know we must put our assets on CDN (another domain). Along with those assets are custom web fonts. Unfortunately custom web fonts via CDN (or any cross-domain font request) don't work in Firefox or Internet Explorer (correctly so, by spec) though...
![Color Palette Generator Using jQuery]()
As I continue to learn jQuery, I think it's important that I begin by porting over scripts I've created using MooTools. One of those scripts is my Color Palette Generator script, which debuted on Eric Wendelin's blog. For those of you that...
![Control Element Outline Position with outline-offset]()
I was recently working on a project which featured tables that were keyboard navigable so obviously using cell outlining via traditional tabIndex=0 and element outlines was a big part of allowing the user navigate quickly and intelligently. Unfortunately I ran into a Firefox 3.6 bug...
The biggest problem about using this code is that the user can change it easily with firebug or others debugs.
It’s not for validation, it’s for assisting the user to select the right file type (since the file selection will only show files of that type).
You should never use this for validation since some browsers do not support it.
Validation should be done on your backend. This kind of selection only helps users what we really need from them.
Be careful with this.
The main issue is that some mobile browsers started to prevent the user from selecting any (!) file at all if the accept property was declared (which is just plain terrible user agent behaviour).
Thus if you want to support these browsers, you have to detect them and remove the accept property.
For details see http://caniuse.com/#feat=input-file-accept