

Dropbox Sharing Gets Ridiculously Easy With Links - dclaysmith
http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/23/dropbox-sharing-gets-ridiculously-easy-with-links/

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rkudeshi
Being able to link to a folder is a godsend. I hated having to share a folder
(editable) when I needed to send someone many files.

However, does this now deprecate the Public folder? I thought that was one of
Dropbox's best features: knowing only things in the Public folder were
publicly-accessible (with a link)—and more importantly, that files located
anywhere else were completely private and NOT web-accessible at all—was easy
to grok and explain.

I worry that as Dropbox moves toward its stated goal of becoming the "file
system for the Internet" that they will give up the focus on syncing our
private files in exchange for the allure of allowing every site and app to
read and write from one's Dropbox. That's a worrisome future, indeed.

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roel_v
I always found the Public folder annoying, you always end up copying stuff
around. Having a list of what files/folders are shared in the web UI would be
enough to keep track, I think (depends on how many shares there are I guess -
but one could still do the 'one Public folder' thing)

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LogicX
Did I miss something? My Dropbox has had this functionality for a long time -
years? Yes - just logged in and confirmed, the links section of my Dropbox
account shows a link generated on 6/26/2010, and I'm sure that wasn't day 1 of
this feature offering.

Maybe not enough people just ever noticed, and they're improving awareness?

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dbuxton
It has long been a feature that you have to activate by clicking
(appropriately enough, I guess) a link on an obscure Dropbox support page:
<https://www.dropbox.com/enable_shmodel>

~~~
calydon
It can't have been that long ago because I've been able to copy public folder
links and share files with users who don't have Dropbox since I first signed
up - back in June of aught 10.

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novadesulol
<https://www.dropbox.com/sh/d15vvo4h7h88xx2/aLdsKAd0qZ> Working URL from the
example

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swah
So, what are they generating? Hex encoded random number?

~~~
tybris
Probably something like that. One problem with the Public folder is that
people can easily guess URLs to files you might not want to share with them. I
recall <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1/test.png> used to show a wireframe for the
Dropbox Desktop client.

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dirtae
This is cool, but when I get a link for a folder, I don't see any way for the
person that receives the link to easily download all of the files in the
folder. The Dropbox page about this feature says "no more zip files"[1], but
without the ability to download an entire folder at once, I'll still need zip
files.

[1] <https://www.dropbox.com/links/features>

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tybris
This has been possible using the Dropbox API for quite a while now. Is the
announcement that they added it to the context menu?

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SpaceDragon
I've been using links with Dropbox from the beginning, and I use it regularly.
I guess the functionality is enhanced now (and no, I won't read the TechCrunch
article).

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jeffdechambeau
Not only is this a several year old feature, this reads like a press release.

More top-notch 'journalism' from TC.

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shimsham
Hyperlinking is awesome

