

Genesis of requiring a "Dropbox folder," versus designated folders - brezina
http://www.quora.com/Drew-Houston/What-was-the-genesis-of-requiring-a-Dropbox-folder-versus-allowing-me-to-designate-folders-like-documents-etc

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SoftwareMaven
The core take-away from this, especially for the early startup, is doing less
better is a far superior strategy to doing more worse. At the early stage,
nobody is going to care about how many features you have. They care about how
well you solve the small problems you are solving.

~~~
pufuwozu
I liked the way Drew put it:

 _It's also one of our core design principles to do fewer things rather than
half-ass anything..._

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Timothee
It's interesting to see how a decision that seems mostly based on a technical
difficulty (how to make it work simply with multiple or any folder), had so
many positive consequences in terms of user experience.

The fact that it doesn't take forever to do the first sync,* that you don't
get to mess up your existing documents, that you don't go over your quota
right away, etc.

On top of that, having a Dropbox folder is fantastic for branding.

* I'm having this problem with my BackBlaze account that has been uploading the first batch for the past 6 months…

~~~
pandeiro
I find it incredible that this is the first post in either thread to have
mentioned branding (and disingenuous on the part of the Dropbox CEO to have
not mentioned it, as if it played no part).

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Nycto
I must admit that the first time I looked at Dropbox, the single folder design
made me stop the train. It wasn't until months later that I realized I could
set up symlinks. It was a bit of an "I feel like a dumbass" moment.

With this in mind, it's easy to see that the Dropbox made the right design
decision. With symlinks, the problem was already solved for them in a way that
power users are already familiar with.

~~~
ejs
Dropbox and symlinks is what I do with config files like .bashrc, .vimrc,
.gitconfig, etc.

Then when you setup a new machine - install dropbox and let it sync, then just
symlink them back up... everything is back to normal.

Really a nice setup so you can continue to change your config files and not
worry about saving the changes to some backup gist or something

~~~
6ren
So the problem Drew mentioned, of mapping between different sets of sync
folders on different machines, is transformed into mapping an identical folder
hierarchy (i.e. the dropbox folder and contents) to arbitrary sync
files/folders, done by the user, for that specific machine.

You get the simple, instant user model (dropbox folder), which you can
customize to any arbitrary user model, as much or as little as you want, when
you want it. And simple syncing.

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Splines
It's most definitely a more easily understood mental model.

I also run Live Mesh to sync my music between work/home, because it has the
neat feature of non-server syncing (it allows you to sync an arbitrary amount
of data, but only between two client PCs, no server storage).

However, an odd feature in Live Mesh is the capability to add an already-
syncing folder to an existing machine in the group. There's no UI to allow you
pick where on the remote PC you want the data to end up, so it's possible to
push a bunch of data to a drive that you didn't want to.

Plus, moving this data is also weird:

\- Stop syncing the folder

\- Move the folder

\- Ask to sync the folder, and point to the new location

There's a certain level of "is this going to work?" going on in your head when
you complete that last step. I'm guessing this sort of problem exists in both
Live Mesh and Dropbox, although with the single-folder paradigm in dropbox,
this scenario probably doesn't happen that often.

~~~
w1ntermute
> It's most definitely a more easily understood mental model.

That doesn't mean they shouldn't offer an alternative for those would prefer
to sync specific folders. I've ended up simulating this behavior by using
symlinks, but that's a real hacky solution and still doesn't solve the problem
of selective syncing.

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Groxx
They do. Run the betas, you can change the folder's location and run
"selective sync" - just set it to C: and turn everything off that you don't
want to save.

~~~
w1ntermute
I'm running the experimental version on Linux, and I see that they do have a
selective sync option. But I don't see how to specify a generic folder to be
synced. All I can do is change the location of the "Dropbox" folder.

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d0m
I think I'll read that question/answer every time I've got to choose between
"Complex to explain but powerful" vs "Easy but trivial to explain". It's so
hard sometime to take the "easy" route as a programmer who know you can build
the powerful way.

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kylec
By and large I agree, but as I'm using Dropbox for more and more things, I
really would like 2 small adjustments to existing features:

1\. Allow me to sync any folder - i.e. don't require the creation of a
"Dropbox" folder.

2\. Modify Selective Sync so that I can omit folders on the client from
syncing.

If those two features existed, I could select my home folder to sync and
exclude Music, Photos, etc if they were too large for my account. I don't need
a complicated remapping interface for syncing when this is done, and it
maintains the mental model of a single folder that's synced.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
I started writing this comment thinking how great this solution would be, but
the more I thought about it, the more confusing it seems to get. What happens
if I sync my home folder and I don't uncheck ~/Library? But I really did want
my Firefox profile synced.

I think to do multi-folder sync, you really are going to have to provide a
mapping interface: Folder A in the dropbox goes to Folder X on this computer
and Folder Y on that computer. Complicated and definitely a power-user
feature.

~~~
d0m
A possible solution would be to put "shortcut" where your folders in the
Dropbox folder. Dropbox could then abstract that "shortcut". So, say on my
desktop I create a shortcut to my mp3/ folder, I would see a "Mp3" shortcut on
my iphone also. So, that fix the "What if multiple folders have the same name"
problem since it's not about folders anymore but about shortcuts that need to
have different names.

So, it's a simple solution that would make power user happy but still leave
the easy install, easy comprehensibility, etc.

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nickpp
Don't know about you, but I already switched from Dropbox to Windows Live Mesh
2011.

One of the reasons (after unlimited p2p sync and 5GB cloud sync) was the
ability to sync ANY regular folder on my HDD...

Turns out they didn't consider the UI as too confusing or complicated.

~~~
jampies
perhaps this helps clarify which approach is succeeding:

<http://search.twitter.com/search?q=live+mesh> vs.
<http://search.twitter.com/search?q=dropbox>

~~~
rottencupcakes
Fun comment, and Dropbox probably is winning by quite a bit, but Dropbox's
referral system for free storage could be the explanation for the Twitter
traffic.

<https://www.dropbox.com/referrals>

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nlh
I seem to recall an older version of the Dropbox client (0.6.384?) allowed you
to actually designate the name & location of your "My Dropbox" folder and get
around this feature/limitation (if you're so inclined).

I know I did it when I first installed the software -- for as long as I've
been using Dropbox I've never used "My Dropbox" - it's always been "Documents"
for me.

I just did some checking and it looks like that version of the software isn't
availble anymore (at least not via official channels). I know that upgrading
to future versions does keep that setting -- I'm running v1.0.10 and it's
still "Documents" for me.

From a scan of their Wiki, looks like symlinks and/or other utilities are the
preferred method. Frankly, I understand why they made this design decision and
it's worked well for them, but for advanced users (me & a lot of other HN
readers , I presume), it would be nice to have a slightly more direct way of
accomplishing this.

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MrNibbles
one word, symlinks!

