
A fresh new Dropbox on the web - siavosh
http://blog.dropbox.com/?p=1005
======
phillco
Very nice! I was a little concerned about the abundant whitespace, but after a
bit of using it I can say it's quite an improvement. It feels much less like
I'm using a webapp, and more like I'm simply browsing my files. Which is the
way it should be.

Edit: The more I use it, the more I like this thing. It's hard to put my
finger on it, but the small size of the old UI definitely made it feel a bit
like a second-class, constrained tool compared to the desktop.

~~~
kijin
> _the small size of the old UI definitely made it feel a bit like a second-
> class, constrained tool compared to the desktop._

Interestingly, my impression is exactly the opposite. The oversized new UI
feels like a constrained toy to me, compared to my usual file manager(s).

On my desktop I can make icons 16px and easily manage hundreds of files and
folders without even scrolling, or switch to a thumbnail view if I need to see
larger pictures. The Dropbox web UI, on the other hand, has only one view
option that seems ideal for neither documents nor pictures, and it doesn't
make any use of horizontal space beyond the hard-coded 960 pixels. So it still
feels too much like a website and not enough like a file manager application.

But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Large icons and bare-bones interfaces
might make it easier for people to perform simple tasks on a small number of
items. Besides, not everyone is looking for Finder/Nautilus/Windows Explorer
when they open Dropbox on the web. In fact, I guess most people use one of
those desktop apps to manage their Dropbox most of the time anyway.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Agreed. Now I'd rather manage my files with my local OS file manager instead
of Dropbox.com (vs before the design change).

~~~
skizm
Sounds like they should have a toggle button:

Layout:

[ ] Old School

[X] New Hotness

(I like the new design if you can't tell)

~~~
toomuchtodo
If it really bothered folks (like me), we could always just write our own
interface using their public API.

------
tuomasb
They're about to get some competition soon from Google. GDrive (
[http://www.geekwire.com/2012/google-drive-wild-screenshot-
lo...](http://www.geekwire.com/2012/google-drive-wild-screenshot-logo-favicon)
) CSS sprites are already on Google Docs:

[https://docs.google.com/static/document/client/css/128155302...](https://docs.google.com/static/document/client/css/1281553026-KixCss_ltr.css)
<https://ssl.gstatic.com/docs/common/jfk_sprite40.png>

.docs-icon-drive{left:-21px;top:-1460px} .docs-icon-drive-
grey{left:-21px;top:-1481px} .docs-icon-drive-grey-hover{left:0;top:-1775px}
.docs-icon-drive-grey-pressed{left:-21px;top:-2205px} .docs-icon-drive-
hover{left:0;top:-21px} .docs-icon-drive-pressed{left:0;top:-1607px}

And the sprites in question highlighted: <http://ppi.fi/gdrive.png>

~~~
xtracto
I ditched Dropbox for insync ( <http://insynchq.com/> ).

I used Dropbox for about 3 years, but never could get past 4GB, after wasting
time filling surveys and whatnot. On the other hand, the payment plans were
way too expensive for me (at $100 per 50 GB). With insync I use my Google's
account storage which is very very cheap (at $20 for 80GB).

Time and time again people begged Dropbox to provide a cheaper option (say,
25GB for 50) or to lower their prices, but they were never listened.

Now Dropbox space feels like hotmail 25MB limit when Gmail started.

------
Sidnicious
Matt Cutts (of Google) replied

> _Normally I just comment on webspam stuff and don't diss our competitors, or
> praise our products, but I feel the need to say that Gdrive is better. It's
> beautifully simple and it just works._

Maybe it’s just late at night and the ‘tonin is kicking in. I _think_ Matt’s
having fun with Dropbox about Google’s yet-unreleased competing product, but
what’s the joke?

~~~
nishantmodak
I think someone's just playing around using his name

Look at the profile

<http://disqus.com/guest/8f1dc8d0613be097f161d62bf5488744/>

------
tammer
Personally I think the design is absolutely incredible - it's quite rare that
I encounter UX so good it makes me smile.

Just look at the rainbow iconography! Perfectly captures the emotional
response I've seen non-tech people have when they realize what Dropbox can do
for them. Sure they could have gone with something more explicit, but each
icon is labeled and it's a perfect way to add life to an interface that could
otherwise be utilitarian.

It seems like all the design sense Google used to have has been picked up by
Dropbox - and then some!

------
firefoxman1
Ooh look, no hash URLs. I bet the HN community is pleased.

Does anyone have an older browser to see what happens when pushstate isn't
supported? Does it fall back to hashes, or what?

~~~
eric-hu
Where are they using hash urls? I'm not seeing that for my files

~~~
firefoxman1
They used to before today. I remember the url's would be like /#::home or
something along those lines.

------
gmichnikov
Looks nice overall. A few thoughts: It would be helpful if folders showed a
"Modified" date. I find the background image slightly distracting. Why not
replace the word "document" with the type of document? It would be nice to
have an option to see bigger thumbnails in photo folders.

------
gburt
I really don't like the rainbow for share. It seems very unintuitive. Very
usable interface though.

~~~
srik
Yes. I wonder what their reasoning for that was.

~~~
reason
Come on guys, exercise your imaginative centers a bit. Rainbows are bright,
colorful, playful, remind you of sunny days out at the park with your friends.
It's not a huge stretch.

~~~
wonderercat
About as much of a stretch as using a unicorn for "delete", because unicorns
don't exist.

I'm getting increasingly concerned that web UIs are trading away usability for
design in Apple's wake, forgetting the part about "design is how it works".

------
Dexec
An amusing choice of titles here.

On the front page right now is '"Space Monkey" Dropbox Competitor Wins Launch,
Has Already Raised $750K', and just below it, is this title ('A fresh new
Dropbox on the web'). I was expecting this to be a post praising their new
competitor.

Anyway, a redesign was badly needed for the web interface. The last time I
used Dropbox on the web I remember questioning how this could be a multi-
billion dollar company.

------
jameshawkins
Very impressed with the new features. It looks great and is very usable for a
web interface.

------
guga31bb
Do the new icons seem enormous to anyone else? It feels like a massive amount
of space. I got the same feeling with the gmail redesign until discovering
"compact" layout.

Can anyone figure out a way to make the list use space better?

------
mattieuga
Very nice! Just one little bug, the first item in a list gets covered by the
title bar when selected and you can not longer see what it is. Edit: This
seems to happen only after going into a folder first.

------
krelian
Looks OK but I liked the other one better :(. I can quite pinpoint what is
wrong but I was very confused when the interface suddenly changed (I was
actively browsing my dropbox when it happened), it felt as somehow the page
didn't complete loading or that I was looking at a mobile version of the
website.

One thing that did specifically irk me is that I could no longer see the file
sizes of the different files. As someone who occasionally needs to micromanage
certain files to save up space that was disappointing.

~~~
scottbez1
If you click the "Kind" column header a few times it will change to "Size" -
it's not the most obvious, but at least it's still there. Unfortunately the
column switches back to Kind when you navigate to a new folder though.

------
RuggeroAltair
I like some of the new features but it's nothing that exceptional. I feel like
they are afraid of shifting too much from the initial (great) product, to
avoid losing the customers that will feel they're losing that sense of almost
invisible client/service. It's an improvement but not really a fresh new
Dropbox on the web.

------
patrickod
One of the more interesting things I noticed about the new UI when it hit my
account was that the usage meter that sat in the bottom left of the screen has
now been hidden in a dropdown. Presumably this is so users will be more likely
to hit their storage limit without noticing?

------
bvi
Nice UI but it would be great to have a "compact" setting (as in gmail). The
text size is too big.

------
meemo
On my public folders that are visible to everyone there's a button labeled
"Add to my Dropbox." If someone were to click this button would they get read-
only access to that folder?

------
shashashasha
Do many Dropbox users see the dotfiles that are shared? Is that annoying to
people? Is it useful to hide them by default, like OS X does?

------
BvS
Is there a way to download documents from the web (eg a pdf file) directly to
my dropbox with a right klick and than "save as"?

~~~
iusable
Not yet. But apparently that's the big 2012 feature Dropbox has been working
on.

~~~
ImprovedSilence
wait, really? If you have the desktop client installed, you can just download
it to dropbox like it's any other directory on your system. It's fantastic. In
fact, I never use the DB web client.

~~~
iusable
Of course, that's been the #1 use case for Dropbox since they launched.

The point is that they are looking to create 'dropboxes' across the open web,
so that you don't have to actually download stuff at your end first. So you
could have a folder which you chose to NOT sync with your computer, but
instead only used as a web-stuff repo in the cloud, for example. That use case
doesn't exist today.

~~~
ImprovedSilence
Ah, interesting. I guess I never messed about with syncing preferences, and
just said 'everything, everywhere'.

------
nuttendorfer
If you look at the site from a certain angle a background image will be
visible at the bottom, just noticed this.

------
tommoor
A great improvement over the previous design, and more importantly it's
approximately 100x faster to navigate.

------
shardys
what do you guys think of the keyboard shortcuts? probably not super
discoverable but golden otherwise I think

------
keketa
Awesome. And it seems they're using Backbone.js.

------
bluebridge
Not trying to rain on Dropbox's parade (they offer a great service), but I
switched to a TonidoPlug to keep my own data and have been very pleased. It's
worth checking out if you haven't seen it and an interesting business model.

<http://www.tonidoplug.com/>

