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The new Dropbox

blog.dropbox.com

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Re: The new Dropbox

#81

Post by dcx »

randlet wrote: post #51
pihalbrecht wrote: post #33

What are the best alternatives to Dropbox? Is google drive better?

pCloud works well for me (support for all major platforms). Google drive has no Linux support which is a deal killer for me.

pCloud looks pretty good - I happen to be shopping around for a Dropbox replacement too. But just a heads-up, when I checked around online I found these [1] [2] [3] comments. It sounds like they have a tool that runs internally to detect piracy and it sometimes picks up false positives, which might cause your account to be deleted?

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/am2xbn/pcloud_allo...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/pcloud/comments/aedoeq/so_i_want_to...

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/6d9yyb/pcloud_allo...

Re: The new Dropbox

#83

Post by onion2k »

FunnyLookinHat wrote: post #29

The blog has a loading icon? It took 10-15 seconds to render for me. Anyone else think this client-side app trend has gotten in the way of recognizing a great case for a server-side render (or even a cached page)?

Anyone else think this client-side app trend has gotten in the way of recognizing a great case for a server-side render (or even a cached page)?

10 - 15 seconds to load a page is the result of poor code rather than 'because it's a client-side app'. Consequently you need to compare a poorly built client-side app with a poorly coded server-side app, or a poorly configured cache, for it to be a fair comparison. And, sadly for us all, there's every chance it'll be just as slow if was rendered somewhere else.

The answer to slow pages is to build them better no matter what tech is being used to drive them.

In the case of this page specifically, loading 17.3Mb of gifs is the main problem.

Re: The new Dropbox

#84

Post by beberlei »

weavie wrote: post #30
disiplus wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we use Google drive it has "small packages" 100 200 GB that are really cheap.

Same. It isnt as nice as Dropbox as there doesn't seem to be any linux support, so I use Grive running as a cron job. It does run on ZFS though. I never realised Dropbox didn't. I guess that puts to rest that ocasssional nagging thought that maybe it would be worth the extra £8 or so to move to Dropbox.

I am quite happy with Insync, which implements a dropbox like client on top of Google Drive and works on Linux.

Re: The new Dropbox

#85

Post by SmellyGeekBoy »

randlet wrote: post #51
pihalbrecht wrote: post #33

What are the best alternatives to Dropbox? Is google drive better?

pCloud works well for me (support for all major platforms). Google drive has no Linux support which is a deal killer for me.

Gnome has support for Google Drive built-in. To be fair though it was pretty much completely unusable until the latest release, and now it's seamless.

Re: The new Dropbox

#86

Post by sethhochberg »

rc-1140 wrote: post #44
Traster wrote: post #12

I strongly feel this is a bad direction for Dropbox. Many companies have tried to integrate tools together. It's always half-baked simply because those tools aren't designed to be integrated. I find it kind of odd Dropbox would be bragging about a dropdown menu to create a Google doc. Surely if that's important to me I get Google drive - the integration will be better because the same company makes the different tool…

> Personally what I value is just basic cloud storage with a decent automatic sync. Similarly. That was the biggest appeal to me back when I first discovered them and they were giving out bonus space for their free plan depending on the number of people that any one user referred. On top of this shift, didn't Dropbox just limit the number of computers one could have their data synchronized between? These moves seem b…

The limit on number of syncing devices has me exploring other options - I'm an oldschool Dropbox user, I got most of my storage space with referrals years ago, and I consume about 6GB on the free plan. I don't need 2TB. I don't really even want 2TB, and I'm certainly not going to pay over $100 a year for 2TB. I'd pay some smaller amount of money for the ability to sync additional devices without storage that I'll never use nor need, but nobody does a-la-cart pricing.

Apple will sell me 50GB on iCloud for $0.99 a month. That fits my needs much better, I just need to go through the exercise of making sure their web interface isn't horrible on my one remaining Linux system.

In fairness to Dropbox, I'm probably not the kind of user they want at this point. They got their mileage out of my early referrals, and I've never paid them a cent.

Re: The new Dropbox

#89

Post by CondensedBrain »

perlgeek wrote: post #70

I seem to recall that Dropbox once tried to become a platform, and failed miserably. Is this the second attempt? I'd prefer it if they just made file syncing easier.

Paper is one of the best writing experiences I've ever had, and the export option is solid, but that's about it. It's trying to operate in the space already taken by OneNote. The web-based tools in Office already output to real files you can get at through OneDrive. Even Google's office suite doesn't do that.

That's probably where Dropbox sees itself headed: the corporate office suite space Microsoft currently dominates. I don't think Dropbox has much of a chance there. There was a time when Microsoft was in a shaky enough position for someone to knock them down, but then they got a new CEO and convinced people to take another look.

Re: The new Dropbox

#90

Post by sunaden »

diziet wrote: post #72

I do a lot of UI/UX design as a part of what I focus on, both at work and for fun. This page is a juxtaposition of well thought out elements and things that make me go `???`. Like: - Good product marketing messaging - Well done images and GIFs that get to the point - News-site like past first article scrolling, I bet it drives more engagement. I even like how the UI elements change color when you go to another articl…

Coming from a similar background I actually think they over-designed their whole blog.

I don't see why they would not put the content to the middle, have a static background so the only thing that changes are the gifs and text as you are scrolling and perhaps pick a more readable, nicer font (though that is probably highly subjective).

Overall, I feel like the Dropbox app UI shown in gifs and the blog are from two very different companies.

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