Christian Stocker has released the latest version of the uploadprogress extension to the PECL repository (0.9.2). The package allows the code to track the progress of an upload automatically.

The main new function since 0.9.1 is uploadprogress_get_contents($id), which allows you to analyse the content of an uploading file during the upload and do appropriate measure (for example warn the user, that he doesn't upload a supported video format). You have to enable this feature in php.ini to make it work. This feature was provided by Ben Ramsey, so you have to poke him, if something's wrong with it.

A simple example of it in action is also included (in the /examples subdirectory off of the PECL page) showing how to upload a file, get the progress and - most importantly - how to get useful error messages out of it.