Yes, there's a new feature from the W3C that's supported by some modern browsers, the File API. It can be used for this purpose, and it's easy to test whether it's supported and fall back (if necessary) to another mechanism if it isn't.

Here's a complete example:

<!DOCTYPE HTML> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8"> <title>Show File Data</title> <style type='text/css'> body { font-family: sans-serif; } </style> <script type='text/javascript'> function showFileSize() { var input, file; // (Can't use `typeof FileReader === "function"` because apparently // it comes back as "object" on some browsers. So just see if it's there // at all.) if (!window.FileReader) { bodyAppend("p", "The file API isn't supported on this browser yet."); return; } input = document.getElementById('fileinput'); if (!input) { bodyAppend("p", "Um, couldn't find the fileinput element."); } else if (!input.files) { bodyAppend("p", "This browser doesn't seem to support the `files` property of file inputs."); } else if (!input.files[0]) { bodyAppend("p", "Please select a file before clicking 'Load'"); } else { file = input.files[0]; bodyAppend("p", "File " + file.name + " is " + file.size + " bytes in size"); } } function bodyAppend(tagName, innerHTML) { var elm; elm = document.createElement(tagName); elm.innerHTML = innerHTML; document.body.appendChild(elm); } </script> </head> <body> <form action='#' onsubmit="return false;"> <input type='file' id='fileinput'> <input type='button' id='btnLoad' value='Load' onclick='showFileSize();'> </form> </body> </html>

And here it is in action. Try that with a recent version of Chrome or Firefox.

Slightly off-topic, but: Note that client-side validation is no substitute for server-side validation. Client-side validation is purely to make it possible to provide a nicer user experience. For instance, if you don't allow uploading a file more than 5MB, you could use client-side validation to check that the file the user has chosen isn't more than 5MB in size and give them a nice friendly message if it is (so they don't spend all that time uploading only to get the result thrown away at the server), but you must also enforce that limit at the server, as all client-side limits (and other validations) can be circumvented.