Dropbox Sharing Gets Ridiculously Easy With Links | Hacker News Reader

Dropbox Sharing Gets Ridiculously Easy With Links

techcrunch.com

47 pointsdclaysmith21 comments

Being able to link to a folder is a godsend. I hated having to share a folder (editable) when I needed to send someone many files.

However, does this now deprecate the Public folder? I thought that was one of Dropbox's best features: knowing only things in the Public folder were publicly-accessible (with a link)—and more importantly, that files located anywhere else were completely private and NOT web-accessible at all—was easy to grok and explain.

I worry that as Dropbox moves toward its stated goal of becoming the "file system for the Internet" that they will give up the focus on syncing our private files in exchange for the allure of allowing every site and app to read and write from one's Dropbox. That's a worrisome future, indeed.

I always found the Public folder annoying, you always end up copying stuff around. Having a list of what files/folders are shared in the web UI would be enough to keep track, I think (depends on how many shares there are I guess - but one could still do the 'one Public folder' thing)

You can view all the links you've made here: http://dropbox.com/links

Also, when something is linked, there is a link icon on the right side of the file browser on http://dropbox.com/home

> they will give up the focus on syncing our private files in exchange for the allure of allowing every site and app to read and write from one's Dropbox

I don't see how those are mutually exclusive.

They're not necessarily mutually exclusive, but it's hard for me to trust an app with my private files if an errant click somewhere might open them up to the public web by mistake.

Previously on Dropbox, I knew that if a file wasn't in my Public folder, it was not shared with anyone (unless I had manually created a "shared folder"). Now, I can never be entirely sure.

Did I miss something? My Dropbox has had this functionality for a long time - years? Yes - just logged in and confirmed, the links section of my Dropbox account shows a link generated on 6/26/2010, and I'm sure that wasn't day 1 of this feature offering.

Maybe not enough people just ever noticed, and they're improving awareness?

It has long been a feature that you have to activate by clicking (appropriately enough, I guess) a link on an obscure Dropbox support page: https://www.dropbox.com/enable_shmodel

It can't have been that long ago because I've been able to copy public folder links and share files with users who don't have Dropbox since I first signed up - back in June of aught 10.

If I recall, they had this feature and then eliminated it. I remember trying to use it a several months ago and couldn't.

I agree. I have Dropbox for a couple of years now and the Public Folder was always there, allowing me to drop files in an ask (by right-clicking) for a public link, that "just works".

Perhaps DB made this feature available for all files and not just those in the Public folder. But is this really prudent? It makes following which files of mine are shared and which aren't harder...

AFAIK this was only available on items in the public folder (and not on folders themselves btw) ... now, it seems that you can get a link to any folder (get Public Gallery link) but I still can only link to specific items in the public folder ...

i've been using that feature for at least months if not years. Very strange

I am positive I have had this feature since the beginning and not just in the public folder. What odd though is that I have been the only person at work with it.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/d15vvo4h7h88xx2/aLdsKAd0qZ Working URL from the example

So, what are they generating? Hex encoded random number?

Probably something like that. One problem with the Public folder is that people can easily guess URLs to files you might not want to share with them. I recall http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1/test.png used to show a wireframe for the Dropbox Desktop client.

This is cool, but when I get a link for a folder, I don't see any way for the person that receives the link to easily download all of the files in the folder. The Dropbox page about this feature says "no more zip files"[1], but without the ability to download an entire folder at once, I'll still need zip files.

[1] https://www.dropbox.com/links/features

This has been possible using the Dropbox API for quite a while now. Is the announcement that they added it to the context menu?

I've been using links with Dropbox from the beginning, and I use it regularly. I guess the functionality is enhanced now (and no, I won't read the TechCrunch article).

Not only is this a several year old feature, this reads like a press release.

More top-notch 'journalism' from TC.

Hyperlinking is awesome

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