Does anyone know what gmail uses flash for?

I find it odd that Gmail.com uses Flash since Flash is considered lousy for the web (in many ways).

What did Gmail use Flash for?

Why wasn't that feature implemented with Java Applet or Javascript开发者_开发技巧 instead?

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Along with various sexiness with attachments, as @ScottR mentioned:

...Flash is definitely used for video chat.

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I think they use it for the upload progress on attachments.

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Flash is used for handling attachment uploads mainly because the "browse" window that gets opened can be set to allow multiple file selection, which was until recently not possible without using Flash, Java or some other plugin.

Flash is a popular method to accomplish this. However, this behavior is now available natively on most browsers using HTML5.

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Expanding on the answers given above me; flash is also used to enable sounds within a webpage. I've never received an email whilst on the Gmail page (with my sound on at least) but I can imagine that it creates a sound to notify you that you've just received an email. Facebook also does this (or used to, I believe) to play a sound when you receive a new message on chat.

The most obvious example of this was the famous Google Pacman which used flash to create the sound effects I think.

So I imagine that one of the reasons is for sounds. As others have already mentioned it is also good to use for file uploads as it's an easy and more universal way to allow file uploads which return progress - and can be interacted with from JavaScript.