This feels like a step backwards. DB has struggled to figure out something beyond being a really great cloud-share drive thing, and sorta kinda messed around with using your DB to host media like photos (which would then make users desire to upgrade their space) and automagically supply some interface sugar around a pile of photos.
But they could have kept going in that direction and competed with all of the photosharing sites, soundcloud, heck even youtube if they had wanted. Say I like to vlog, what would be easier? After filming raw footage, edit it, make my final cut, upload to youtube and wait for transcoding and availability? Or just put my final cut into a "droptube" folder and it automagically appears at www.droptube.com (not a real thing, but could be in some alternate dimension)
Or what if I want to host a simple site? Fiddle with a hosting provider, screw around trying to figure out the 37 different metrics I'll be charged for, or just put some html, css and js file into a dropbox "webhost" folder?
I dunno, I think they're closing off lots of opportunity and have had trouble executing on this kind of cloud application for the masses, or they're really not going after it.
I'm guessing they can't go that route because youtube (google), and twitch (amazon) are the only 600lbs gorillas that can do /something/ to stave off the insane 100lbs gorilla that goes for the jugular (MPAA/RIAA and the like).
Photo-gallery, as you've noted opens them to competing with other such providers... who all seem to eventually race towards throwing ads on everything to try and make some profit.
Freely accessible areas also equate to more consumers (not users), and I don't know if DB's business model charges any kind of fee for access to that data.
This mostly sounds like DB is out of areas they want to / feel they can succeed in tapping for new customers and thus they attempt to cut back on costs with the hope of inertia retaining the existing users.
My guess is that the reason they are closing this is the cost of bandwidth. Dropbox allowed to host publicly all types of large files and exchange such files by a link that did not require any interaction with DropBox to download. It seems really hard to monetize such usage.
I wonder what features Dropbox can offer that won't inevitably be surpassed by Google Drive, iCloud Drive, and OneDrive.
To me, their main strength seems to be that they have the best cross-platform UI/UX right now, but even that may not be the case for long.
Maybe they could evolve/branch into a general-purpose file hosting service, where people can use it to publicly share images (like imgur) and music (like Soundcloud) with the appropriate UI for each case (or spinoff site, e.g. Imagebox and Musicbox) except people would just need one account to comment/vote on everything. Who knows, maybe they can even become an alternative to YouTube..
Let independent developers publish their games and apps from there, bypassing Steam and the other app stores, optionally charging a fee per user, with Dropbox taking a cut.
Maybe even offer a chatroom/messaging system, to compete with Slack/Skype etc.
I'm amazed that there wasn't an outcry the other month when they - just one day, with zero notice - renamed my shared folder and made it a Team folder.
Big deal? Well, they actually changed the name of the folder. And now I can't modify it. So yeah, big deal. I have Logic Pro templates that look there. They all broke. It wasn't too bad for me, but imagine if you had scripts or tools or whatever pointing to a file on your FS that happened to be in one of the affected folders. You woke up one morning and they were all broken.
You can't just rename people's files. That's not part of the social contract I have with you, Dropbox.
I relied on this "light" publishing for a few things and I'm quite pissed off. I did not notice any notification on this.
To me, this should be done very very visibly and with tons of warnings. I used it to communicate screenshots with details, etc. Now all links are broken and I'm SOL with no viable solution to changing those links from documents, bugs, etc., etc.
Oh, they definitely notified their users. There were emails and warnings in the UI, it was very visible. Really, you can't blame Dropbox there.
However, one can still blame Dropbox for the change itself. I used this on several occasions, including hosting archives for academic publications. No way in hell I can change those links. Maybe that wasn't a wise choice, but at that time it looked like a good way: The link did not give a clue about my identity, making peer review easier, and DB being a well-funded and known internet company those links were surely meant to work forever, cool URLs don't change is something they had to know. Boy was I wrong.
Dropbox has been becoming increasingly user-hostile for a great while now, and it all centers around the deprecation of the Public folder.
I think this change primarily serves to funnel downstream content viewers to the shared file "landing page". That landing page is filled with valuable screen real-estate that Dropbox can use to promote itself.
That page is a usability nightmare, too. Photos can't be zoomed to full size on certain screen configurations, videos are served transcoded, and many other file types that the browser can render natively are flagged as "undisplayable". File content will often become unavailable or hidden behind a full-splash "create a Dropbox account!" affordance that pays no heed to whether you're logged in, a customer, or just a casual observer.
This drives me bananas every time someone links me through DropBox. I actively dislike people sharing stuff to me with DropBox.
Would make sense to make for a free product but if people are paying and this is still broken, seems a bit stupid.
Actually... now that I think about it; what annoys me most is the fact that it pops up a login box. If it was just on the side not covering the content I probably wouldn't dislike it so much.
I use GitHub. I'm a developer, so maybe this is hard... They let you use their website to create a repo, add a file, and then in the settings specify that master is the source branch for GhPages so that it's available via the browser to the world at yourname.github.io/yourproject. You can even add a custom domain if you want.
S3 buckets with the website feature enabled, but you have to pay for usage and I don't know of a way to emulate Dropbox's local filesystem integration with S3... at least not one that's accessible for nontechnical users.
Just guessing, but might they have had something in their EULA / TOS up until October 4:th 2012 that somehow forces them to keep the Public folder available? Maybe some language about how features are removed /deprecated, or about how changes in the EULA / TOS are allowed to be done, that makes it infeasible to do without breaking the contract?
October 4, 2012 was the cutoff where they stopped generating Public folders for new Dropbox accounts-- at the time, existing accounts could still use the Public folders that had already been created.
I'm guessing they mention those accounts in the announcement to make it clear that the changes don't apply to those accounts, since pre-10/4/12 accounts never had a Public folder at all.
I don't understand why October 4, 2012 is even mentioned here. That's when they disabled public folders for new users, but now they are getting rid of all of them. Dropbox is getting rid of public folders entirely.
The second most useful feature of Dropbox (beyond being "a folder that syncs"), gone. I'm very sad about this, even though I knew it was coming. This is literally the case of "we can't have nice things because $reasons".
Well, $600mil in VC cash, it's not like nobody saw this coming... I can almost see in my head the guy from JPMorgan saying "So geeks, time to stop screwing around - how're you going to increase the pressure to monetise all those users and get me my 100x return on that half a billion dollars? Quickly!"
How would this help? They still allow sharing links even for free accounts. It's just that it's not direct linking and instead you're forced to go to a Dropbox page.
No, it probably has to do with making downloaders go to Dropbox and tempt them to subscribe.
I really have the feeling that DropBox will die. They don't do anything Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive or Apple iCloud doesn't do, and these companies all have much more money / talent / infrastructure / synergy with other products.
For some reason I still only instinctively trust Dropbox to reliably sync my files. I'm always worried I'm going to lose something if I put it into my Google Drive or iCloud folder, though I'm sure by this point it is probably just as good/reliable.
My concerns have less to do with individual files being manually added to a Google Drive or iCloud folder and more to do with how well it handles starting entire new project folders w/ hundreds (or thousands) of files that are constantly being updated.
Tell me more about how great these kind of companies are, where they can terminate aspects (or all) of a service you have come to rely on. These kind of shenanigans are exactly why I don't trust Google with anything other than core services, and why I do my best to not rely on anything "cloud" (as in, consumer-facing stuff)Too much control in the hands of those who are not accountable to anyone, especially not to me.
I have been told many times (here, as well as elsewhere) how I don't "understand" cloud and related drivel. I understand cloud very well. That's why I don't depend on it.
> Effective September 1, 2017, Dropbox Pro, Plus, and Business users will no longer be able to render HTML content, and the Public folder and its sharing functionality will be disabled.
It's not incorrect if it is only true for a (in this case, large) subset of people.
The now changed title completely misses the point of this submission, and is not more correct or less editorialized than the original one. I would prefer if it were restored, the "today" could get removed to cover that it will happen later for Pro Accounts. If memory serves me right it would be something like "Dropbox disables Public folder". That is what happens.
I agree. I would recommend "(2012, 2017)" to succinctly clarify that this is somehow relevant to right now and that further investigation is needed.
Note: I have flagged the parent comment so that it shows up for the moderators (and also upvoted it to counteract the impact of flagging). So, nobody else needs to flag it - if too many people do so it might go [dead].
Unless I'm mistaken, this won't affect services such as Site44.com [0], which lets you create up to 10 Web sites by syncing with specified Dropbox folders for $4.95 per month. I use the service for a side project and to publish a site for my students with the materials for the law-school course I teach; it works quite well. (EDIT: And that's my only connection with the company.)
Seeing the /help/16, I'm guessing this is one of the oldest help page of Dropbox. /help/1 and /help/2 don't exist, so the still published oldest one must be https://www.dropbox.com/help/3 "System requirements to run Dropbox", makes sense
You're probably right. This page has existed since at least 2009, in various forms[0]. For many years, it helpfully instructed users how to share the files in their public folder, one of their most useful features from day 1.
I used to use UpShot, a OS X plugin that saved by screenshots to my Public Dropbox folder and copied the public link to the clipboard. It was super useful for referencing images in code reviews, wikis etc.
It's not a direct link to file, but a link to their UI which only then offers a "download" option. Besides being incredibly annoying (over a megabyte of useless JS and tracking crap), it kills off many functionalities that were enabled by public links being direct-to-file URLs.
AFAIK creating new accounts didn't give you a folder "Public" anymore since a long time ago, but they still existed with preserved functionality for old users.
bane|9 years ago
But they could have kept going in that direction and competed with all of the photosharing sites, soundcloud, heck even youtube if they had wanted. Say I like to vlog, what would be easier? After filming raw footage, edit it, make my final cut, upload to youtube and wait for transcoding and availability? Or just put my final cut into a "droptube" folder and it automagically appears at www.droptube.com (not a real thing, but could be in some alternate dimension)
Or what if I want to host a simple site? Fiddle with a hosting provider, screw around trying to figure out the 37 different metrics I'll be charged for, or just put some html, css and js file into a dropbox "webhost" folder?
I dunno, I think they're closing off lots of opportunity and have had trouble executing on this kind of cloud application for the masses, or they're really not going after it.
mjevans|9 years ago
Photo-gallery, as you've noted opens them to competing with other such providers... who all seem to eventually race towards throwing ads on everything to try and make some profit.
Freely accessible areas also equate to more consumers (not users), and I don't know if DB's business model charges any kind of fee for access to that data.
This mostly sounds like DB is out of areas they want to / feel they can succeed in tapping for new customers and thus they attempt to cut back on costs with the hope of inertia retaining the existing users.
mixedbit|9 years ago
Razengan|9 years ago
----
I wonder what features Dropbox can offer that won't inevitably be surpassed by Google Drive, iCloud Drive, and OneDrive.
To me, their main strength seems to be that they have the best cross-platform UI/UX right now, but even that may not be the case for long.
Maybe they could evolve/branch into a general-purpose file hosting service, where people can use it to publicly share images (like imgur) and music (like Soundcloud) with the appropriate UI for each case (or spinoff site, e.g. Imagebox and Musicbox) except people would just need one account to comment/vote on everything. Who knows, maybe they can even become an alternative to YouTube..
Let independent developers publish their games and apps from there, bypassing Steam and the other app stores, optionally charging a fee per user, with Dropbox taking a cut.
Maybe even offer a chatroom/messaging system, to compete with Slack/Skype etc.
codazoda|9 years ago
jen729w|9 years ago
Big deal? Well, they actually changed the name of the folder. And now I can't modify it. So yeah, big deal. I have Logic Pro templates that look there. They all broke. It wasn't too bad for me, but imagine if you had scripts or tools or whatever pointing to a file on your FS that happened to be in one of the affected folders. You woke up one morning and they were all broken.
You can't just rename people's files. That's not part of the social contract I have with you, Dropbox.
NegativeLatency|9 years ago
cpg|9 years ago
To me, this should be done very very visibly and with tons of warnings. I used it to communicate screenshots with details, etc. Now all links are broken and I'm SOL with no viable solution to changing those links from documents, bugs, etc., etc.
Very very very bad!
onli|9 years ago
However, one can still blame Dropbox for the change itself. I used this on several occasions, including hosting archives for academic publications. No way in hell I can change those links. Maybe that wasn't a wise choice, but at that time it looked like a good way: The link did not give a clue about my identity, making peer review easier, and DB being a well-funded and known internet company those links were surely meant to work forever, cool URLs don't change is something they had to know. Boy was I wrong.
zitterbewegung|9 years ago
hundchenkatze|9 years ago
27182818284|9 years ago
fjarlq|9 years ago
DHowett|9 years ago
I think this change primarily serves to funnel downstream content viewers to the shared file "landing page". That landing page is filled with valuable screen real-estate that Dropbox can use to promote itself.
That page is a usability nightmare, too. Photos can't be zoomed to full size on certain screen configurations, videos are served transcoded, and many other file types that the browser can render natively are flagged as "undisplayable". File content will often become unavailable or hidden behind a full-splash "create a Dropbox account!" affordance that pays no heed to whether you're logged in, a customer, or just a casual observer.
lathiat|9 years ago
Would make sense to make for a free product but if people are paying and this is still broken, seems a bit stupid.
Actually... now that I think about it; what annoys me most is the fact that it pops up a login box. If it was just on the side not covering the content I probably wouldn't dislike it so much.
baby|9 years ago
Having said that, I haven't had that public folder in many many many many many years. So I'm surprised about this announce.
If anyone knows a quick way to let anyone do what I described above, please do tell.
codazoda|9 years ago
scrollaway|9 years ago
http://archive.org/
You have a bit more of a guarantee there. Bonus points if you fill in the copyright field correctly.
PDFs, audio files, video files etc will all be post-processed and rendered like you would expect them to be.
welanes|9 years ago
wging|9 years ago
rodgerd|9 years ago
013a|9 years ago
LeoPanthera|9 years ago
rz2k|9 years ago
saycheese|9 years ago
Given the initial release was in June 2007, does anyone know why this only applies to accounts created after October 4, 2012?
filleokus|9 years ago
JonathonW|9 years ago
I'm guessing they mention those accounts in the announcement to make it clear that the changes don't apply to those accounts, since pre-10/4/12 accounts never had a Public folder at all.
jorams|9 years ago
TeMPOraL|9 years ago
bigiain|9 years ago
(I know - I'm clearly not "their most valuable customer segment" - if I was them I'd probably be breaking my irrelevant-to-them shit too...)
discreditable|9 years ago
bigiain|9 years ago
Giorgi|9 years ago
the_af|9 years ago
No, it probably has to do with making downloaders go to Dropbox and tempt them to subscribe.
make3|9 years ago
brandon272|9 years ago
My concerns have less to do with individual files being manually added to a Google Drive or iCloud folder and more to do with how well it handles starting entire new project folders w/ hundreds (or thousands) of files that are constantly being updated.
erbo|9 years ago
AFAIK, neither Google Drive, OneDrive, or iCloud will work on Linux.
ksk|9 years ago
mdekkers|9 years ago
I have been told many times (here, as well as elsewhere) how I don't "understand" cloud and related drivel. I understand cloud very well. That's why I don't depend on it.
alainv|9 years ago
I can verify it still works for Pro/Plus accounts with existing Public folders.
leereeves|9 years ago
> Effective September 1, 2017, Dropbox Pro, Plus, and Business users will no longer be able to render HTML content, and the Public folder and its sharing functionality will be disabled.
onli|9 years ago
The now changed title completely misses the point of this submission, and is not more correct or less editorialized than the original one. I would prefer if it were restored, the "today" could get removed to cover that it will happen later for Pro Accounts. If memory serves me right it would be something like "Dropbox disables Public folder". That is what happens.
unknown|9 years ago
[deleted]
i336_|9 years ago
Note: I have flagged the parent comment so that it shows up for the moderators (and also upvoted it to counteract the impact of flagging). So, nobody else needs to flag it - if too many people do so it might go [dead].
dctoedt|9 years ago
[0] http://www.Site44.com
dorianm|9 years ago
dublinben|9 years ago
[0] http://web.archive.org/web/20091114094103/http://www.dropbox...
robinhowlett|9 years ago
Anyone recommend a better alternative?
msie|9 years ago
TeMPOraL|9 years ago
unknown|9 years ago
[deleted]
icehawk|9 years ago
tomc1985|9 years ago
bigiain|9 years ago
Me, I'ma gonna switch to Photoshop - it doesn't have this feature either, but screw those Dropbox clowns, amirite?
Zhenya|9 years ago
If I missed the instructions in the announcement, I apologise.
cpg|9 years ago
alexnewman|9 years ago
swiley|9 years ago
Tor is always good if you need a quick easy way to publish something without a public IP address
dublinben|9 years ago
jug|9 years ago