Dropbox Chooser | Hacker News Reader

Dropbox Chooser

blog.dropbox.com

126 pointsgoronbjorn37 comments

When we did this at Omnidrive we worked with other online storage providers and web app prodivers to do it in a standard way so that instead of 'Upload from Dropbox' you could specify any online service that implements the interface.

for eg. the upload form could let you pick your Google Docs, or another account.

We called it WebFS. I think the idea was too early and most of us ended up running out of money or being sold.

I'd like to see the same idea implemented here again. Web app developers can implement an upload button that can open any URL. Similar to WebDAV but for web apps.

https://www.filepicker.io ?

I was kinda hoping this was official support for multiple accounts.

I was hoping for the same but this would mean people could register dozens of accounts to get a lot more storage.

I have a paid work and a private dropbox. There's got to be some way they could let you add as many paid accounts as needed and one free account.

I have two accounts also, share a folder between them to sync. You have to pay double if you have a lot of data but with the new cheaper 100GB plans it doesn't burn a hole through your pocket.

Interesting, similar to https://www.filepicker.io/

Yup, it's great to see that Dropbox shares our vision of helping connect online storage to online applications, so the spirit is the right one.

Our goal is for users to be able to connect directly to their online content, and we're working with Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, Skydrive, Facebook and others to make this happen.

Any project that lasts longer than a few months inevitably encounters some form of duplication from elsewhere. There should be a Metcalfe-esque law for that.

Being chased by a 800 pound gorilla is always scary. Hang on guys, I love your product and I'm sure you can embrace and extend :)

Love the enthusiasm! To us, anything that helps makes products work more seamlessly together online is a win for the web and the world we want to see.

It also seems like Dropbox is encouraging a different use case, in that the links they provide by default are Dropbox share links that route back to Dropbox, and even the direct ones expire after 4 hours. With Filepicker.io, we want to be a more complete filesystem solution, offering things like store to S3, read/write on the URLs, conversion, etc.

To the cloud!

Yup. You guys are doing a great job, I don't think of this as competitive. Image conversion is brilliant.

Keep it up!

Yea, I came here to say that too. I can't imagine adding a Dropbox-only solution when something like filepicker.io exists.

My immediate impression was this was going to be a way to switch Dropbox accounts. That would have been super cool. Not that having a Dropbox API for selecting files is bad.

I do love how a guy from box added this link....

Just staying on top of things ;)

+1 :)

I was looking into Dropbox integration in a Web applications just last night. Fantastic!

I was hoping this would be a way for me to choose which files I sync to which machines.

Heartily agree with this. I don't need my library of vintage drum machine samples at work, but would love to have my personal txt file wiki along for the ride.

Can't you do this already? Maybe you just need to update your dropbox client.

Indeed I can! Awesome!

Right Click on the Dropbox Icon in your system tray -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Selective Sync Settings. Works for me on mac, pc and linux. Haven't tried in on my mobile devices.

EDIT: You can only choose which folders to sync, not specific files so that may or may not be what you were looking for.

This is a brilliant move by Dropbox. It is now becoming part of the Internet fabric and, if the move is successful, it will likely remain dominant--at least essential--for a very long time.

Now if anyone knows how I can invest in it as soon as possible, I'd appreciate to know. (Email in profile.)

It's worth noting that Dropbox Chooser is a javascript tool and intended for web applications.

Native applications might still find it easier to directly access the dropbox folder (no need to know the user's account credentials and faster syncing than through the API with its rate limits).

Google Drive exposed something similar few months ago. http://googleappsdeveloper.blogspot.com/2012/08/allowing-use...

Trello was amongst the firsts to add file picker support (great feature we use frequently). Funny to see that the first player Dropbox picks is Asana ..

Now they should get a "download to dropbox" method so it would be just another option instead of "save link as"

O'Reilly offers this. http://shop.oreilly.com/category/customer-service/dropbox.do

Yeah, there's some services like this, but most of them have size caps (or in that case, deal with small files anyway). While it would be great for browsing on my phone, I'd really take advantage of this for downloading large files that would take a long time to download otherwise (especially since they'd then have to get uploaded by dropbox).

I'm all for making it easier to work with the cloud, but... is this application really all that useful, considering that the whole concept of the Dropbox app is that all your Dropbox files are constantly kept in sync on your local machine?

I think of this as the very essence of what Dropbox does, are there really very many situations where local copies would be unavailable?

One bonus is that the transfer from Dropbox to a web service is going to be way faster than from your computer to that same service.

Additionally, the user can navigate away from the page, close their browser, lose internet, etc. and the transfer will still happen.

> I think of this as the very essence of what Dropbox does, are there really very many situations where local copies would be unavailable?

I can think of a lot of situations where the local file is a gigabyte or more and I'd rather not sit around letting the web form upload it.

With this, I can submit immediately, and the site can handle the heavy lifting on their backend. I get to wander off and do something productive.

While syncing files is the main attraction for me with Dropbox, there are other useful features too. You can set which folders sync with other machines or only upload to Dropbox, as well as generate links for files in your Dropbox.

What it's useful for is web applications that don't want to deal with user and file management.

We don't want to have to do a UI to manage files for every cloud storage provider. This is something Google Drive is well in the lead with currently.

I mainly use Dropbox to only keep copies of things I need right away (small footprint mentality). The selective sync is fantastic for letting things be out of sight until I need them. Backups are great for this concept, I can keep tons of photos in my dropbox account but don't need them hogging my drive space. Enter the benefit of server > server & not needing a local copy of it.

mobile/tablets, chromebooks, shared computers, friend's computers... there's plenty of instances where you don't have a dropbox client available.

Is this a web intent?

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