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Comment by atarian | Hacker News Reader

They are NOT removing the ability to link to files in your Dropbox. Just the Public folder itself, which is no longer needed since any file can now be shared with a public link.

EDIT: And for those of you concerned by any impact on using Dropbox as a CDN, there shouldn't be any issues. The links that Dropbox generates from your files have a bit of chrome (a preview of the contents of the file and a couple of buttons), but you can still get a direct link from the "Download" button.

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And what if you have a whole bunch of files to share? Will relative links still work?

In that case they should implement instant shared link creation, not via opening a web browser.

You can get still get a link via right-click menu (at least on Mac OSX) for any file in your Dropbox folder (including the ones outside of the Dropbox > Public folder).

The problem is that you could share a link and it'd be seamlessly downloaded by a receiver of the link....you could even use them to handle images in web pages for example.

Now? The person who is receiving the link has to go to a web page, then click download. It's an unnecessary extra step and a downgrade in the user experience.

Even worse, it's now harder to keep track of what you have shared and what you don't.

From DB's perspective this is most likely to force additional eyeballs onto their product by forcing them to hit a webpage before download, but it's a lousy user experience for all involved. To the receiver of the link DB just looks like an old fashioned file-sharing site a la megaupload and not something special.

"To the receiver of the link DB just looks like an old fashioned file-sharing site a la megaupload and not something special."

How do the direct links help DB look "special"? To me, they scream "generic CDN".

Direct links are convenient for me, the end user. That's why I use dropbox -- to have an easy way to put files up onto the internet to show others.

Not my point. To the person who's receiving your link:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/9910153/20111022_131203.jpg

looks more or less identical to:

http://i1.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/000/720/180...

Both are direct links, and neither tell you much about the site that you're downloading the pictures from. The indirect link actually tells people that Dropbox exists as a service. Whether that's better for the end user or not isn't relevant to what I said.

Dropbox is much different from Megaupload. On Dropbox you get a direct link and you know whose directory you download from. On Megaupload the uploader is anonymous (to the downloader) and you do not get a direct link.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/9910153/20111022_131203.jpg

https://www.dropbox.com/s/s3wlvb7h36o5uvb/20111022_131203.jp...

There are your two links. One is a public folder the other is not.

One takes you to a web browser before you can even get the link. One does not.

Guess which one I would rather have. And now guess which one they are removing :(

Add "?dl=1" to the second one it is a simple link again

https://www.dropbox.com/s/s3wlvb7h36o5uvb/20111022_131203.jp...

Magic!

To get it I have to have my browser open. An extra completely unneeded step IMO.

Except now Firefox actually wants to download it instead of just displaying it.

On the other hand, it seems that if you stick that ?dl=1 link into an <img> src, it still downloads and displays.

But that isn't good enough. I show people screenshots by tossing the public URL into an IM or IRC chat all the time. It's good for that because it requires no effort from me to upload the file, and viewing the image is seamless for the recipient (click the link, see the picture). Under the new system, clicking the link would (at best) initiate a file download, which is far more annoying.

There's: https://dl.dropbox.com/s/s3wlvb7h36o5uvb/20111022_131203.jpg...

But clearly a) if it ends on .jpg it should be an image and not html and b) the direct link should be on the html page with a fancy "Copy to Clipboard" button next to it.

But instead of (b) they are actively preventing getting a link to the image by hijacking the context menu.

Well actually,

https://photos-5.dropbox.com/si/xl/Y-dAUouiiTV2IbOuAMZKe2t7k...

I am not sure if it could work at all times, but you can check for the URL of the picture within the new-style dropbox page.

Which is of course not same as Public folders.

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