Dropbox releases Windows 8 client | Hacker News Reader

Dropbox releases Windows 8 client

blog.dropbox.com

38 pointsyefim32314 comments

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This is just a viewer, not the app that syncs

Can it be more than that, with Windows 8’s app sandboxing?

Apparently, yes, as long as they declare it in the manifest:

http://lunarfrog.com/blog/2011/10/03/winrt-storage-overview/

I'm astounded that people can still be this clueless about Win8 months after release.

I have no idea whether Dropbox can work under Windows 8, and I read the various tech blogs/updates reasonably closely.

Would this work with Win8RT? (or whatever the OS they are running on their ARM surface tablets is called). What about Surface with Windows 8 Pro (or whatever the X86 Surface Tablet OS is called)?

Are you working on a product for which knowing these answers in useful? I think the average product developer is not yet seeing the benefit the targeting Windows 8 and therefore hasn't bothered to educate themselves on the intricacies of the platform.

I personally just don't want to invest my time in it. Either way, if I'm going to push something, its going to be over HTTP and not platform tied.

Sure it can. They can use WinRT Background Transfer to sync content in the background.

Since it registers itself as a storage provider, it doesn't really need to sync locally. File open/save dialogs in Metro apps have a Dropbox location once the app is installed, same as SkyDrive (or Documents, Photos, etc). That's preferable on RT devices, which this app is probably primarily aimed at.

Sync is not just for integration. With large files it is good to have everything local before you try to open. Of course it takes up a lot more space.

Seems odd that they're just now getting this out.

Most companies don't even have any apps out for their services. There isn't even a Spotify, Rdio, or Pandora apps, and they have a lot more to gain. Releasing Win8 apps is a pretty low priority item for almost everyone.

Well, it really only makes sense to not put a higher priority if the main target user base would be desktop users. However, if they are trying to target Surface RT users or something similar, it would make a lot of sense to go for something that works right now because desktop mode is pretty much unusable without mouse/trackpad.

I think that's probably a waste of time. We've only had one visitor on windows 8 and after doing a reverse lookup on the IP, it turned out to be coming from us and was a member of our QA team.

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