
Engineering Dropbox Transfer: Making simple even simpler - nicksundin
https://dropbox.tech/application/engineering-dropbox-transfer--making-simple-even-simpler
======
dguido
Firefox Send, SendSafely, and Magic Wormhole are all end-to-end encrypted.

[https://send.firefox.com/](https://send.firefox.com/)

[https://www.sendsafely.com/](https://www.sendsafely.com/)

[https://github.com/warner/magic-wormhole](https://github.com/warner/magic-
wormhole)

[https://webwormhole.io/](https://webwormhole.io/) (magic wormhole over
WebRTC!)

This seems like table-stakes for a modern file transfer system. Accepting
unencrypted files and storing them temporarily in the clear on your own
servers seems like it only introduces tons of additional risks without much
gain.

~~~
zaroth
If I might ask a lazy question - do any of these work with basic (e.g easily
available on a lightweight container) command line tools on the terminal? I
assume not since they must all be Javascript-based.

~~~
pezdeath
Found this:
[https://github.com/timvisee/ffsend](https://github.com/timvisee/ffsend)

~~~
timvisee
Thanks for linking, dev here. Yes, perfectly usable for automation!

~~~
prakis
ffsend excellent tool. Ffsend is inspiration for me to make 'ele'

[https://github.com/prakis/helloele](https://github.com/prakis/helloele)

Ele is a command line tool works with your own cloud. Main difference from
ffsend and other cmd tools is no need to share links, files are referred by
file-indexes.

~~~
timvisee
Sounds cool! Will check it out later today.

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jrochkind1
> helped us break away from preconceived notions based on what is easy and
> incremental to build on top of the Dropbox stack.

In my experience, this is one of the biggest challenges for developers
involved in product design, expressed succinctly there.

And to try to step out of this is why it's so important to have product
owners/managers who are NOT technical staff, and who technical staff doesn't
unduly influence. When you've invested your time and energy in building a
hammer, you really want to figure out how to treat anything as a nail.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
> When you've invested your time and energy in building a hammer, you really
> want to figure out how to treat anything as a nail.

And to be fair, this is reasonable, right up until it isn't. When every tool
costs onboarding and maintenance effort, it makes sense to leverage as few
tools as possible to the greatest effect - but much as "everything should be
made as simple as possible, but not simpler", you want the fewest tools that
will do the job well, but sometimes that _is_ N+1, and a new tool _will_ pay
for itself.

~~~
jrochkind1
Absolutely.

But it's really hard to tell when it is and isn't reasonable, when it comes to
UX.

I find that the only thing you can do is try to have peopel who aren't
developers and don't even _know_ what's "easy to build incrementally on top of
the existing stack" determining the appropriate UX for the
customer/market/business need.

Then the developers can say "OK, but if we did it like THIS, it would be a lot
cheaper to implement because we can incrementally add to what we've got", and
the product manager/owner can push back "Eh, that's not going to meet the
market need", "OK, but we can't afford it" \-- it's a negotiation. But in my
experience you really have to have someone who isn't a developer at all
standing up for the user need, for anyone who will be involved in the
implementation, no matter how smart and user-centered, it's just too tempting
to decide that the thing that can be met with the incremental change to
existing stack is "nearly as good" no matter what, when it's _so_ much easier
and more elegant under the hood.

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pmccarren
This is awesome! Firefox Send[0] is another very similar product in the space.
Excited for more file transfer players!

\- [0] [https://send.firefox.com](https://send.firefox.com)

~~~
newscracker
And Firefox Send has much higher limits too, for free. Without a Firefox
Account, the user can upload up to 1GB. And with a Firefox Account, the limit
is 2.5GB. Dropbox Transfer, in comparison, provides (just) 100MB in the free
tier.

~~~
knjoy
Yea but it doesn't seem like Firefox Send lets you right click on any file
anywhere on my computer and just right click to Transfer. The uploading with
Dropbox Transfer (through the desktop client) is super reliable too -- I have
Time Warner internet and when it invariably craps out, my upload auto-resumes.
Looks like this here:
[https://www.dropbox.com/t/jJNe5IBPrezaw7aE](https://www.dropbox.com/t/jJNe5IBPrezaw7aE)

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errantmind
I uninstalled Dropbox and moved my files elsewhere because there was NO WAY to
disable the annoying notifications asking me to 'upgrade' my account (when my
account was almost full). My whole family used Dropbox with paid accounts and
I'm actively moving them elsewhere because of this.

~~~
inopinatus
The client is now full of all kinds of irritating nagware to enable this and
that unnecessary feature, even though I’m a paying customer already. Doing so
whilst ignoring the design language of the OS is a hallmark of applications
arrogantly deluded of their own importance. The Dropbox client UX now puts me
in mind of 90s-era RealPlayer, which surely ranks as one of the worst software
products of all time.

I do not appreciate intrusive micromanagement and passive-aggressive
interdepartmental memos from humans, let alone from my file sync utility, and
when this occurs separately on every god-damn device and even after a time
machine recovery, I find myself verbally abusing it, and the product managers
that spawned it, aloud in the most vulgar language.

Not good, Dropbox.

~~~
dbxerthrowaway
Can you elaborate on what you mean by nagware? Are they OS notifications,
"ads" in the tray or the Dropbox app?

~~~
an_opabinia
I am a paying Dropbox user.

When I click the Dropbox icon in my system tray, 43% of the space is used on
two ad units: trying to "introduce Gmail integration" and "Recent shows the
latest activity." Here you go -
[https://imgur.com/a/51MiWOb](https://imgur.com/a/51MiWOb)

You silently enabled some new syncing mechanism that doesn't actually download
files to my computer. This was absolutely nuts and is a far more serious
violation of why I used Dropbox, and it almost made me churn. I was so angry
that I had to change some kind of setting on the web to sync with selective
sync and have real bonafide files in my Dropbox folder again.

The ultimate nagware: Open folders in: Dropbox desktop app by default is
garbage. Obviously people want to open Finder / Explorer, that is the whole
value proposition of Dropbox. I don't care about your product manager's
monetization schemes or introducing Paper or whatever, please just never mess
with defaults because I'm not comfortable suggesting this app to my parents if
it litters them with new paradigms and garbage. How do your PMs not understand
how important those referrals are? How integral simplicity is to those
referrals? Just because you guys don't measure them, just because there isn't
a chart going up and to the right, doesn't mean it's not real.

The backups nagware. Nobody wants that. People get they have to store stuff in
the dropbox folder. I do not want to confuse my parents, "Sometimes Documents
is backed up, sometimes not." It's unambiguous. Again, messing with the
simplicity.

The photos nagware. Nobody wants to do that. People use Photos on their
iPhone, it's fine. Don't eat up storage on something they use iCloud for.

The Accessibility prompt. You don't need it. Why are you asking for
Accessibility?

Permissions to access Documents, Desktop, Downloads without backup. Again you
don't need that.

Nagware, adware, product managerware. I hope this is sufficient.

The lack of care here is mindboggling for a product so simple. Everyone should
embrace the idea that they're much more likely to make it worse rather than
better. Drew Houston should be putting that on a huge billboard behind him on
his Zoom calls to 22 year olds fresh out of school, it should be your motto,
it should be the first sentence out of everyone's mouth, regardless of what
the numbers or metrics or surveys say.

~~~
foobiekr
Yep. I’ve been a paying Dropbox customer pretty much from the start. The
quality of the current Dropbox is atrocious and I ended up with entire
directories of corrupted files full of null bytes as a bonus.

I am looking to move as soon as I find something which isn’t garbage.

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tananaev
Please make Dropbox Transfer email notifications configurable. I use it a lot
and I don't want to be spammed with emails.

~~~
nicksundin
This is something we started providing recently (based on user feedback we
heard, like yours). There's now a "let me know when someone downloads"
checkbox when you're making a Transfer (both on Desktop & web)

~~~
toomuchtodo
Can you also support "Let me know when the download completes successfully?" I
assume this is easy if the recipient is adding to their own Dropbox account,
or downloading to their client using a Dropbox client, but may be slightly
more tricky with a browser download.

EDIT: In the event my comment was ambiguous, I meant these notifications
should be configurable by the sender. Essentially "delivery confirmation" for
bits.

~~~
nicksundin
We're definitely looking into ways to make the recipient side smoother. Stay
tuned ;)

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faitswulff
Does anyone know if there's a CLI tool to transfer files? Ideally I'd want to
give it a file as an input and then have it return a shareable URL that
transfers the file directly from my computer to whoever clicks the URL.

~~~
pornel
Firefox Send has a CLI:
[https://github.com/timvisee/ffsend](https://github.com/timvisee/ffsend)

~~~
timvisee
Thanks for sharing, dev here. It's an unofficial tool, but fully featured for
sure. Supports link shortening or QR code generation as well.

~~~
faitswulff
Oh damn, I forgot I need to send files larger than 1GB. Still neat though,
I'll check it out! Thanks

~~~
timvisee
Yea, I really hope Mozilla will allow me to use FxA OAuth anytime soon to
solve that issue.

------
nicksundin
Author here. Happy to answer questions!

~~~
godzillabrennus
Great work on this. I had to send 100GB files last year (1TB in total) and it
was extremely difficult to send them as-is. Most clients that upload data
choked while attempting it. Had to break the files up into smaller ones using
a compression tool. It actually increased the file size overall but the
transfer could then be facilitated.

Hope to see you guys add a feature like DocSend next. It’s like a missing
puzzle piece from a utility perspective. I have no idea who downloads a shared
file once a url is generated. Would be nice to request emails and get alerts
when it’s downloaded.

~~~
jdxcode
You gotta wonder how much easier it would be to put a stamp on a letter with
an SD card in it sometimes

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leetrout
Related I’ve been wearing out webwormhole.io to send large files to coworkers.

Not a 1:1 here but very useful tool in the same space.

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gaogao
This was a great writeup! I loved start to finish view, that didn't get bogged
down in technical details.

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Eric_WVGG
wow, that was a very exhaustively informative explanation of how to clone
WeTransfer

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yahyaheee
Not sure why it still stakes hours to days to upload a video from my iPhone.

