

Show HN: Filepicker.io - dead simple file uploads - tagx
http://filepicker.io/

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qeorge
I'm your target audience. I've built this exact function into client apps
(upload from various sources and edit with Aviary). Its a PITA.

I'd consider yours, but there's a couple big problems right now:

    
    
        1) Doesn't support IE. 
        2) Doesn't work on mobile
    

There's other issues, but those are the show-stoppers.

FWIW, Chute (<http://getchute.com>) has a better implementation of this
concept. That said, I still haven't seen enough of a value add here (with
Filepicker or with Chute) to depend on yet another black box service that may
shut down tomorrow.

~~~
jenius
it's worth noting that it can't work on mobile - mobile safari does not
support any kind of file uploads. But not working in IE is definitely a
fatality

~~~
eslachance
It's worth noting that iPhone does not equal Mobile. What about Android? Even
if Chrome is the only Android browser supported, that would be plenty!

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jenius
This is a good concept but needs a lot of work.

1\. I don't want things opening in a new window on my site

2\. I don't want someone else's branded module opening on my site

3\. This is designed using bootstrap

If you hired a real designer, made it a script that could open a modal on my
site, and gave the option to pay some small fee to get rid of your branding
and give it a few color theming options, I would be totally on board.

~~~
brettcvz
1\. Good to know. It'd be interesting to know how the community feels about
windows vs iframes. We felt like windows were more analogous to system
dialogs, but iframes are easier for message passing 2\. Would you pay for
custom branding? 3\. I defer to other articles re. bootstrap. We figured if we
wanted to match the styling of other sites in the best possible way, bootstrap
is a decent choice

~~~
jsavimbi
> We felt like windows were more analogous to system dialogs, but iframes are
> easier for message passing

Stop. Hire a designer.

~~~
dangravell
Apologies if I missed a nuance but it would be more helpful if you explained
why...? Are you saying the OP is spending too much time pontificating when
they should be handing the work to a trained professional? Or are you
disagreeing with what they said?

~~~
jsavimbi
You have to read the three reasons posted above and then the explanation. The
service as implemented on the backend looks good but on the front end they
need some help of the professional kind.

Also, including the Aviary viewer in the demo takes away from the product.

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rhplus
This is a nice solution, given the limitations of the various service APIs it
hooks into, but I feel like it's the wrong solution to a more general problem.
If I'm understanding what's happening, a user has to hand over far too much
access just to transfer files. In order for me to select one file from service
A and have it transmitted to service B, I have to give service C access to
_all my files_ on service A. Does anyone else not see a problem with this? It
would be the equivalent of the File Upload box in Internet Explorer letting a
website see my entire file system just so I can pick one file to upload. This
is the kind of _allow all_ nonsense that users let slip by with the
proliferation of ActiveX controls, but now instead of arbitrary access on my
local machine, I'm giving service access to my cloud storage.

~~~
brettcvz
We actually see it as part of the solution to the permissions problem. By
acting as this universal file provider, you no longer have to give access B or
D or any other applications you want to use. We allow users to consolidate who
they're giving access to.

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brettcvz
With more and more of user's content on the web, we decided it should be far
easier for users to work with that content on websites. Hope you like it! It's
rough, but we wanted to get feedback as we work on it.

~~~
true_religion
It sounds like Imgur with an Aviary plug in attatched to it.

The only additional places you're pulling from are dropbox and facebook. Do
you have plans to pull from more locations?

Also, do you have plans to allow website owners to integrate this with their
own site (much like Aviary allows you to integrate the editor you're using)?

~~~
brettcvz
Yup, we're planning on supporting a whole bunch, including fancier things like
gmail attachments, evernote, etc. Are their clients you'd like?

And yeah, you can use it on your site right now. Grab a key and you're good to
go

~~~
true_religion
Hmmm, I'd want a client capable of seeking out images stored as a background
image or underneath a invisible div that some site owners use to protect their
image. But that's probably impossible.

~~~
tagx
Interesting, what uses were you thinking of?

~~~
true_religion
Well one case would be to have a bookmarklet that lets you upload from any
webpage.

As a site owner, not having to write yet another bookmarklet would be great.

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hoprocker
So let me see if I have this straight: you differ from other file uploaders
out there (e.g., <https://github.com/blueimp/jQuery-File-Upload/>) in that you
allow "upload from anywhere", plus a quite nice interface? Not to belittle it,
those are solid additions to the space.

edit: Btw, if you're looking for IE support on the from-computer upload, look
into using iframes for transport.

~~~
liyanchang
Right. Our goal is not only to be a great uploading experience, but also to
tie in all the cloud services, like Dropbox, Facebook, GMail, etc.

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sosuke
"Doesn't currently support Internet Explorer"

Is this considered okay again? Best Viewed in [Netscape 3.0] or [Internet
Explorer]

~~~
brettcvz
I wouldn't say we consider it ok by any means. But we'd rather get the
feedback earlier than later, so we said screw it and sent it out

~~~
chrislomax
I presume your limitations are due to the drag drop file handling on the
upload from computer?

I did something recently like this and ended up with an ugly "Select file"
button when people are in IE.

I really hope IE are pulling their fingers out with IE10, it appears they are.
We are getting a load of adverts in the UK now on Microsoft products, like
Bing etc. It seems to me they are taking it seriously again.

~~~
richcollins
It doesn't support D&D on OS X / Safari

~~~
chrislomax
I was actually really surprised when I discovered this when developing the
bulk upload facility I did. It wasn't great when 9/10 computers in our office
are Macs. Didn't make it worthwhile showing it off to people in our place!

I'm sure they will all support it soon enough and my days coding it will be
worthwhile.

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deanpcmad
Internal Server Error when submitting my email :(

Looks like a great service. But where do images get uploaded to? I currently
run a site called Desktop.ly where users can upload a picture of their
desktop. When uploaded Imagemagick is used to convert the image into different
versions using the Carrierwave gem (Desktop.ly is built using the brilliant
Ruby on Rails!).

How does Filepicker.io work like this, where are images stores, can this be a
custom Amazon S3 or Rackspace Cloud Files storage? Can images be resized?
Does/will it work with RoR to offer a seamless integration?

Plus, what happens with downtime? Of course this will be a big thing with many
web services.

Hope you're able to answer my questions. Also, check out Desktop.ly ;)

<http://desktop.ly>

~~~
tagx
Sorry about the error. We hit our outgoing email quota due to the unexpected
response from all of you guys. We're working on getting that fixed.

User file uploads currently get uploaded to S3 for a short amount of time
until your application can retrieve it. We don't do any processing of the
files.

We plan to release SDKs in the future for easy integration, including one for
RoR. We also plan to have this up all the time since heroku is pretty
reliable. For those rare cases when this fails, we could revert back to a
normal file picker on your page.

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Udo
This is an excellent idea and it looks nicely executed, too. I only fear there
may be a duplication of efforts in respect to the upcoming WebIntents
framework. Do you guys have plans to integrate with it at some point?

~~~
liyanchang
We would love to be a webintents provider and it's on the feature list.

Part of this is also an effort to spur the webintents forward :D

~~~
groby_b
Hey, intents are moving forward :) (Neat app, btw!)

~~~
liyanchang
Haha. No doubt. I'm on the w3c mailing list :D

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science_robot
Why are 4 CS geniuses from MIT using their talents to build pretty file
uploading UI? Pretty file upload UI is easy!

~~~
sewerhorse
They've got this MBA dude who's calling himself a hustler so they'll be
alright :D

~~~
antidaily
The Brass Rat messes with those guys' minds.

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dolphenstein
Looks neat! However, you won't catch me putting my credit card details into
that donations form. You might want to put a paypal button or something that
makes me feel a bit more secure about the whole thing.

~~~
liyanchang
We thought it would be fun to use Stripe for something. Nothing touches our
site.

I guess I don't have much money to steal; I'll look into PayPal for those
lucky ones who have assets to protect :D

~~~
redslazer
Considering its aimed at hackers, maybe put a "powered by stripe". That would
probably reassure most people in your target market at the moment.

Though if you do end up adding a paypal button try not to use the word
"donate", paypal seems to have a problem with non-charities doing this.

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overboard
My biggest fear is I'll use it, and a few months later you're acquired by
Facebook and then it's gone.

~~~
brettcvz
We can't say this for certain, but what we'd like to do it put it down in
writing that if for any reason we can't provide the service anymore, we open-
source it. Would this help?

~~~
overboard
It would. Having pricing plans in place, to show you want to run an actual
business would also help boost that confidence.

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bluesnowmonkey

        filepicker.getFile(mimetype, callback(url){alert(url);});
    

I feel dumb saying this, but I don't understand the example code. Why do I
have to give Filepicker a mimetype? I would expect it to tell _me_ what MIME
type the user uploaded. Are you setting the type of file the user is allowed
to upload? Can you whitelist several at once? Are you only expecting images,
or does this work for PDFs, etc?

Also, is this javascript? I think 'callback' should be 'function'.

~~~
liyanchang
That's correct. You get to whitelist the files we allow the user to choose.
The mimetype should work for things like "text/ _" or "_ " if you want
multiple, but I'll look into adding something that takes a list, if that's
something that you would want.

Thanks for catching that typo. We were debating if just to write 'callback' or
to have a simple function that calls alert. We ended up with neither :D Fixed.

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cmon123
Four MIT students and this is what they decide to make?

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mbylstra
I understand that you are trying to do a MVP, but 'does not currently work in
Internet Explorer' is stretching the meaning of 'viable' a bit too far.

This tool is supposed to make developers life easier when building a file
upload tool? Getting it to work in IE is the most annoying part, but this
plugin is not offering any help.

~~~
liyanchang
We completely agree. Nailing cross browser issues, more services, and looking
to mobile is what can make this valuable and, as you correctly point out, we
aren't quite there yet.

We just wanted to loop the community in early to help us build a product that
you all want. Thanks for the feedback :D

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Prospect
Brett,

This is great and I would pay to use it in a second if it could handle uploads
on the iphone/ipad (something like <http://www.aurigma.com/iphone/>). I just
signed up for the developer key. Will you be emailing that list with feature
updates/news? Thanks

~~~
brettcvz
Good to know re. mobile.

Re. email, we'll be trying to limit the number of emails we send out to the
lowest possible, but if there's interest we can create a separate mailing list
that's higher volume for feature announcements, etc. over the coming week.

~~~
Prospect
Great I'll be following the progress. One more thing I would really need is
the ability to remove and order the upload options.

~~~
liyanchang
Good to know. Is that something you imagine the developer being able to
specify or a user setting?

~~~
Prospect
Hey Liyan, I would want this as something I, as the developer, could specify.
A social site might want all the options there, but for my sites I'm worried
about conversion and wouldn't want the added confusion of having upload
choices that my customers are rarely going to use.

------
huhtenberg
FOUR people working on this? Seriously?

~~~
sparuchuri
As with many things, there may be more than meets the eye. I'm sure these guys
are putting together a lot more functionality that is not visible/ready yet.

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splatzone
I think this would be a lot more appealing if it were available as an open
source script too.

What happens if your business disappears overnight? Do I have to completely
re-implement uploading in my app?

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hardik988
Great concept.

However, a small nitpick : When I click "Get a key" without entering any
Email, I get an Internal Server Error at /thanks/. Probably you guys should
handle edge cases?

~~~
liyanchang
Valid point. We'll get a patch in asap.

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thrownaway2424
Why can't I just drag files right into the example application without having
to open the window and click "my computer"? For e.g. I can just drop file on
Gmail and it attaches them.

~~~
liyanchang
That's a good thought as I do the same thing in GMail. I'll add it to my
personal todos.

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wesray
@brettcvz, you guys need to validate your email input for empty strings when
signing up for a dev key. On the project note, looks very promising, keep up
the good work.

~~~
liyanchang
Email validation in play. Thanks for pointing that out.

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movingahead
I like the concept and hope the team keeps exploring more. I wonder whether we
can get additional information about the image - time, location, people tagged
in it etc

~~~
liyanchang
That's good to know.

Just to be clear, would you like that information at the dialog or would you
like the app developer to be able to see it?

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Khao
I like it. It's sleek, easy to use and very well implemented. Congratulations
on creating this, I will keep this in mind in case I ever need it in the
future.

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adelevie
I'm not a js guru, and am having trouble understanding the example code. Could
you post a more thorough example?

~~~
brettcvz
To save on copy-pasting, check out our demo app, the source for the landing
page: <http://filepicker.io/static/js/demo-app.js>

Make sure you put the imports in too. Hope you like it, and let us know if you
need a hand

~~~
adelevie
Sorry for the late followup, but thanks for the link. getFile is a callback
for when a file is uploaded, not a way to just get one file (I'm coming from
an ActiveRecord/Ruby view of things).

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RoryH
Doesn't currently support Internet Explorer?! That's a deal-breaker still
unfortunately.

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Naushad
An awesome Instagram... lol

Any idea of integration with CMS ? (Wordpress, Drupal ?)

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noinput
Do you really need publish_stream and offline_access on Facebook to obtain my
photos?

~~~
liyanchang
Those are for a set of features we have coming down the pipeline. Publish
stream would allow us to save the photos back and offline access is for
auth'ing just one account for access to all your files.

I completely agree with your sentiment of asking for only what you need.

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tommyd
I've not tried it yet, but what a cool idea! Will be sure to give it a go

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minalecs
i think the facebook integration is less than optimal. If my site uses
facebook login, and a user is asked for facebook again on initial use with
filepicker the experience would be confusing.

~~~
liyanchang
That's a great thought. Custom stylesheets is on the feature map, but we
should also be looking into someway of reducing the facebook double login as
well. Thanks for this feature idea.

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kiranryali
Looks great, good job Thomas & team

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aducks
Great stuff, keep up the good work

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justhw
might wanna put SSL on the thanks/donate page

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juggy01
Ridonkulous. So cool.

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dmor
you guys should join up with Chute and crush it together!

~~~
ananddass
:-) Interesting possibility......

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jtwarren
This is awesome!

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gdowns
Cool idea

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jjwang
nice!

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Radzell
Nice it's great that you used bootstrap so that if I change my bootstrap file
it will change the module. Bootstrap for developer who aren't great designer
has been a amazing tool. It has open my eyes to modules like this that gives
my app the same feel.

