We already use HTML5's FileApi for thumbnails when available (bug 29248), but we could also perform the actual uploads by reading via FileApi and then pushing up.
This would be a requirement for resumable downloads (bug 29250)
and even without changing protocols should enable better upload progress feedback since we can follow the progress of an XHR submission better than an iframe (bug 24759, bug 30242).
Would also allow implementing multi-file uploads (bug 26502) without changing server-side API support to handle multiple files in one POST (bug 16751 etc).
Version: unspecified
Severity: enhancement