There's a marketing opportunity here for Dropbox. "Dropbox, we sync all your files, not just the links to them."
I lost years’ worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user interface
71–80 of 147 posts
Re: I lost years’ worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user interface
#72Google definitely jumped into Drive and Apps without putting any thought about privacy or recoverability into it whatsoever. There's a reason why they keep launching in beta - because they get an MVP out the door and then people start using it as if it's ready for production. Further, everyone I know that uses Google Apps / Drive has no idea how to use it properly. One common thing I see is people will send a link to…
> One common thing I see is people will send a link to a particular document not knowing they've unwittingly given the person access to all of their documents What? Share links for documents are just a link to that document no to the folders where they are
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Re: I lost years’ worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user interface
#73I get it, it sucks that this happened. But does that make Google Drive "suck"? The author himself states he has used it since the service started - that's what, 6 years? I agree that what happened was unfortunate, but it's a bit immature to go around badmouthing the entire product because of this. It's not like this happens everyday for every single user.
Google Drive started in April 2012. It's been a year and a half, approximately, not 6 years.
He mentions using Google Docs from the start, which eventually became Drive.
Re: I lost years’ worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user interface
#74Re: I lost years’ worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user interface
#75As bad as I feel for the OP, you have to take responsibility instead of blaming Google. Seems like they do a good job of explaining when you empty the trash in Drive: "Files in your trash are about to be permanently deleted, including Google Docs in your Trash. Warning: When using Google Drive for PC/Mac, Google Docs aren’t actual files saved on your hard drive; they are links to files stored online." If you want a r…
It's just very unintuitive and it deviates from the popular and most accepted paradigm. I would think Google drive syncs your actual files, and that it would just choose Google Docs as its default editor.
Re: I lost years’ worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user interface
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, if not clear to the users, then it isn't good UI -- even if it's obvious to you.
By this logic, you can trivially prove any UI to be a bad design. Find a single person who finds it unclear, and voila: the UI must be bad. As blcknight alluded to, this rule is only relevant when the proportion of users for whom it is an issue is non-trivial.
Yes, we are in agreement. I did not say "one single user".
Regardless, I think it's pretty bad design. I would naturally expect a file named "My Document Name.gdoc" that's sitting in a folder on my desktop to actually contain the contents of my document. That's how files normally work. Doing otherwise goes against longstanding convention.
Re: I lost years’ worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user interface
#77While I sympathize with the author (it must have hurt pretty bad if it made him go create an entire website dedicated to "google drive sucks") I thought it was quite obvious that files created on Google Drive with their document editor were not actually copied to your computer with the Google Drive program. It's easy to see when you try to open the file with Notepad or a similar local text editor. Additionally you ge…
> I thought it was quite obvious that files created on Google Drive with their document editor were not actually copied to your computer with the Google Drive program. For a techie, perhaps. For a non-techie, that's something they're unlikely to have ever seen happen in their filesystem. Even if they opened it in Notepad, they'd probably not know the ramifications of what's shown there.
If they opened it in notepad they'd see a one-line URL, which is pretty obviously not the 5-page paper they typed. But I suppose many people wouldn't ever open it in anything other than the Drive interface, and I continue to agree it's not obvious enough for certain types of people.
Re: I lost years’ worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user interface
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good question. Seems a pretty simple solution: the browser is the editor, even if the files are local. We use browsers to interact with local files all the time, for example during local web app development.
Only that's impossible as it is now (and will be for the forseeable future) because it wouldn't be very wise to give browser apps write access to the local filesystem.
You would not need to be able to edit the offline file. Instead it could still be just a link to the online version of the file, like it is now. But additionally it could contain the actual data that can be imported back to Google servers when it is accidentially deleted from the server.
Re: I lost years’ worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user interface
#79I get it, it sucks that this happened. But does that make Google Drive "suck"? The author himself states he has used it since the service started - that's what, 6 years? I agree that what happened was unfortunate, but it's a bit immature to go around badmouthing the entire product because of this. It's not like this happens everyday for every single user.
Google Drive started in April 2012. It's been a year and a half, approximately, not 6 years.
gDocs has been around for a lot longer
Re: I lost years’ worth of Google Docs files because of a poor user interface
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
When you're moving a document off some drive, you expect a moved copy to work.
Except for the part when they tell you. http://i.imgur.com/ijTQTTq.png
If you work on client programs, you know or should know that users don't read. It's important to prevent them from easily doing dumb stuff (where a single "do dumb stuff anyway" button does not really count as sufficient deterrence -- because it's not dumb from the user's perspective, it's only "dumb" if you know the internals).