zlacker

File uploads were in HTML almost from the start :) And video was not no, but it was a tricky thing to figure out, not just from an implementation but also licensing point of view. RealMedia was another player that dabbled in this market.

I think the disconnect was more with designers. They wanted visual tools back in those days and had no time for CSS and JavaScript. Adobe/Macromedia gave them what they wanted and also entrenched their commercial position this way (which Adobe already had in the paper publishing market!). It took a long time for the graphical guys to come on board with the open toolchains.

Macromedia wasn't a bad company as such as they did make the excellent Dreamweaver which did promote open standards, but Adobe corrupted them badly.

>>GekkeP+(OP)
The big thing Flash added to file uploads was resumability. Uploading a large video file with pure HTML features on the internet of 2006 tended to fail, and adding a Flash helper worked around that.

And I recall it enabled a progress bar, too.