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Dropbox' Public/ folders will be phased out soon

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Re: Dropbox' Public/ folders will be phased out soon

#71

Post by barik »

tammer wrote: post #61
antidoh wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have helped a computerphobe (hates computers and Internet, clueless, but must use them) with Dropbox. She gets that her folders on various computers around town are synchronized. I had a very difficult time explaining to her that her same folders and files are available via the web interface. Those people are out there.

Most people (as in the majority of the population with access to digital media) have a very difficult time understanding that the filesystem is a hierarchy. I'm always espousing the necessity of backups to my friends/family, which means I've usually got the role of setting up a Dropbox account for someone without a technical background. When I say that their "My Documents" folder is a level above their Dropbox folder…

"When I say that their "My Documents" folder is a level above their Dropbox folder, I get a blank stare."

You might get a blank stare, because Windows itself has been trying (somewhat unsuccessfully) to move away from this hierarchical model, blurring this metaphor. Consider the Libraries feature, which can essentially collect many folders (My Documents, Dropbox\Documents) and can represent them as a single virtual library.

Similarly, "Favorites" further serve to flatten this hierarchical model (Desktop, Downloads). And finally, consider things that look like folders but aren't physical folders at all (Recent Places).

I actually didn't understand your "level above" analogy either. On Windows 7, the My Documents is:

C:\Users\barik\Documents (appears as My Documents but the folder is actually called Documents, hah!)

and

C:\Users\barik\Dropbox

which is at the same level?

Re: Dropbox' Public/ folders will be phased out soon

#72

Post by derefr »

FreeFull wrote: post #45
runn1ng wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add "?dl=1" to the second one it is a simple link again https://www.dropbox.com/s/s3wlvb7h36o5uvb/20111022_131203.jp... Magic!

Except now Firefox actually wants to download it instead of just displaying it.

On the other hand, it seems that if you stick that ?dl=1 link into an src, it still downloads and displays.

Re: Dropbox' Public/ folders will be phased out soon

#73

Post by euroclydon »

snsr wrote: post #70
euroclydon wrote: post #51

What I find disappointing is their focus on photo uploads. I think users really just want to pick a best of breed provider for major features like this in their lives, and Facebook has photos sharing locked up. Dropbox has brought simple file synchronization between machines that are not necessarily on the same network, to the masses, but they need to do it in away that doesn't make you want to drop Dropbox when it g…

> I updated the clock, Dropbox deleted all files in my Dropbox that were newer than the last time I had that machine running. While off-topic, this is a concerning scenario that I hadn't considered.

Prior to that, Dropbox just worked for me, but now I see it for the dangerous black box that it is. It can't be trusted as a backup solution for important files. It's only a convenient toy.

Re: Dropbox' Public/ folders will be phased out soon

#74

Post by lobster_johnson »

runn1ng wrote: post #32

A hint to everyone: If you got the link, made by "Get link", and you don't like the innecessary preview in browser, just add "?dl=1" to the end of the link example: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1axoy96uwa80wko/matfyzak%20%281%29... - ugly preview page https://www.dropbox.com/s/1axoy96uwa80wko/matfyzak%20%281%29... - sane PDF link

Doesn't work as intended with images -- you get a download instead of showing the image inside the browser. A step backward compared to the old Public folder.

Re: Dropbox' Public/ folders will be phased out soon

#75

Post by derefr »

Here's a question (that probably only Dropbox themselves can answer, until this change comes down the pipe)--the email said this:

> After July 31, we will no longer create Public folders in any new Dropbox accounts.

Now, I've deleted my Public folder before, and it seems that recreating a folder named Public in the Dropbox root and restarting the sync daemon was all that was needed to convert it back into "the" Public folder.

So, for those new users, will this change mean that "the folder named Public will no longer have special-cased semantics, unless a flag is set on your account saying you're grandfathered into the old behavior", or does this change mean "we'll leave in the code that makes the Public folder work the way it does--but just not generate one for new users when setting up their dropbox, so they must explicitly create it themselves?" It seems to me that the latter is the most simple/elegant option, technically, and the one I'd go for if I was a Dropbox engineer and hadn't specifically been told to make it impossible for people to use Public folders from now on.

Re: Dropbox' Public/ folders will be phased out soon

#76

Post by ceejayoz »

euroclydon wrote: post #51

What I find disappointing is their focus on photo uploads. I think users really just want to pick a best of breed provider for major features like this in their lives, and Facebook has photos sharing locked up. Dropbox has brought simple file synchronization between machines that are not necessarily on the same network, to the masses, but they need to do it in away that doesn't make you want to drop Dropbox when it g…

> And Dropbox doesn't support restoration for folders

That's news to me. And to Dropbox: http://cl.ly/3y0r47461p443f3j300u

Re: Dropbox' Public/ folders will be phased out soon

#77

Post by ceejayoz »

driverdan wrote: post #65
mkup wrote: post #4

People started to use Dropbox as a free CDN, didn't they? Why do we need AWS CloudFront if we have Dropbox? :)

Because S3 makes a terrible CDN. The latency is bad and can vary significantly. Using it as a CDN for very large files is fine but for standard static web assets it's terrible.

Where was S3 mentioned? The post said CloudFront.

Re: Dropbox' Public/ folders will be phased out soon

#78

Post by SoftwareMaven »

villagefool wrote: post #36
bane wrote: post #22

This is a move absolutely in the wrong direction. I'm sure the idea is to push more eyeballs across the DB logo and grow the userbase. But to those users, DB will look like yet another fileshare a la megaupload/filefront/whatever and not something particularly special. Here's some better ideas: - harden up the way users want to use the public folder and make it more like a CDN - Add another price tier if they must to…

>> - put media specific folders in the public folder (maybe at different price tiers) and turn it into a flickr/soundcloud/youtube competitor! Is it really a good idea to open multiple fronts against services which are 'pro' at what they do?

I would LOVE it if DB became a YouTube competitor. I don't share many videos on YT because it is so annoying to upload them. If I could just fling them in a DB folder and know my online video library was growing, my family and I would be posting many, many more.

However, I'd understand why DB would stay far away from that (too distracting from the core mission). They have to find somewhere new to grow into, though.

I'd look into building an app to do it, but they limit apps to 150MB files.

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