I think that the main use comes from when you're not at your own computer. If you're at work or a friend's house, it'll be far simpler to just drag the file into the browser than to install dropbox.
I'm in that situation about four times a year and this will be a huge time saver compared to the old system.
I was hoping it would do something seriously trick (that I have no idea how to implement) and ask the local client to upload instead of a pedestrian HTTP upload.
That might be possible to implement, actually. Just like how clicking on facebook spotify 'listen with' links now plays the song in the _spotify_ app, there may be a way on the server to control what the client does...
The client has a permanent connection to the server, but in this case the server doesn't necessarily know what client it's on, and some of us have our browsers configured to be pesky (with a dialog box indicating the URL and target app) about sending URLs to different apps.
On Windows at least, this requires a registry entry to associate the application with the new "protocol". Steam does this as well to launch games and so forth with "steam://foo"
A custom protocol wouldn't strictly be necessary. You could have the browser tell the server the path of the dropped files then have the server instruct the native client to fetch and upload those files.
However the File object hides the full path from the JavaScript code for security reasons (see https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/File). I assume most dropped files would contain the user's home directory and therefore account name in the path.
Not that this isn't nifty, but hasn't drag and drop been a standard UX fixture since 1984? The fact that drag and drop is a standout feature adds fodder to the argument that the web is an immature platform who's functionality doesn't parallel that of native applications.
The double referral bonuses have been available for college students (anyone with a @.edu or equivalent email address) for quite a while. Glad to see it's available for everyone now!
The part that gets me there is that paid users got doubled to 1GB instead of the 500MB and EDU users got no benefit from the bump. (It's free, so I'm not complaining very loudly)
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 82.7 ms ] threadI'm in that situation about four times a year and this will be a huge time saver compared to the old system.
They really ought to state the customer use-case on-blog, I use Dropbox on only my own computers and didn't understand the point at all.
Dropbox is a good case because it works incredibly well and people actually use it.
https://github.com/glenmurphy/dropmocks http://www.dropmocks.com/
"Sorry, our uploader doesn't yet work on your browser (which doesn't support drag and drop file uploads)"
http://www.html5rocks.com/en/tutorials/dnd/basics/
We use a modified version of https://github.com/blueimp/jQuery-File-Upload on http://picplum.com Signup and see how we use it. We've been told many times that we have a slick uploader :)
But PPK says “it’s a fucking disaster.” http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2009/09/the_html5_dr...
Dragging files from your desktop into the browser to upload is fairly simple to implement and works consistently on HTML5 compatible browsers.
To get it working in all the browsers that your users use, it's trickier.
Still cool.
However the File object hides the full path from the JavaScript code for security reasons (see https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/File). I assume most dropped files would contain the user's home directory and therefore account name in the path.