Posted on Jan 9, 2009

Great Moments by Design – Dropbox Part III

Dropbox on OS X

Regular readers of this site will know that the posts under the Great Moments by Design feature are usually short pieces touting this feature or that in applications I really enjoy using. This post will be a little different. During the last year, I’ve really come to appreciate Dropbox. Enough that this will be the third time I’ve covered the app as a great moment. Enough that I’m going to write more than a few paragraphs.

This tool has been designed so well that it deservers the space.

There a few different aspects of Dropbox that I want to look at.

Applications vs Utilities

When it comes to a positive user experience, I’ve never been as happy with an operating system as I am with OS X. A good part of that is due to the excellent third party applications and utilities that are available for the platform.

That’s right. I’m breaking these into separate categories. According to Dictionary.app, in regards to computing, the New Oxford American dictionary defines applications and utilities thusly:

Application: a program or piece of software designed and written to fulfill a particular purpose of the user

Utility: a program for carrying out a routine function.

That’s a good distinction, but I’ll add my own take to this. In the most general sense, I believe applications allow the user to create or use content or data. With an application like Pages, this is obvious. But apps like iCal and Mail also fit here—the content may be a schedule or a piece of communication, but the user is still using the application to create these items.

On the other hand, most utilities are tools that extend these applications or even the operating system itself, allowing the user to work with their content/data in ways the applications were not designed do on their own. I’d include great tools such as Hazel, Witch and Quicksilver in this category.

Dropbox is one of the best examples I’ve seen in this area for a long time. What do you do with Dropbox? Copy files into your folder. Move files into your folder. Drag and drop files into it. My friend Dezene Huber said it well via Twitter:

I drop stuff in it. And then take it out again. Repeatedly.

Now there are other ways you can work with these files (more on that below), but at it’s core, Dropbox is a simple concept.

One great example of this usage came recently from the likes of Jon Hicks and Simon Collison. As designers, they had a need that no app was successfully meeting—the taggable, sync-able and shareable digital scrapbook. Both found that their ideal solution included Dropbox at the core.1

Dropbox could be considered an extension of the operating system, just as Apple has tried to make the iDisk feature of the MobileMe/.Mac service. It’s fits in so well you barely notice it’s there. To me, that’s a utility.

Collaboration Tool

As well, this tool makes sharing and collaborating a cinch. Dropbox offers three types of sharing: public files, shared folders and image galleries.

Public Files

In your Dropbox folder, there is a folder titled “Public”. Any file placed in here has a public address that you can give to others so they can view it online, and view only.2

Shared Folders

This is where the real collaboration takes place. Creating a shared folder allows you to invite other users to access this folder. If they accept, the folder will then display under their own personal Dropbox folder and each user can work on the files within.

When I saw the update to iWork at this week’s Keynote at Macworld, my first thought was that iWork.com couldn’t hold a candle to Dropbox. Rather than simply give a view-only copy of a file to your friends, coworkers or clients, Dropbox allows each person to have access to update the files as well. Working on a Pages document? The other folks can still add comments, but within the document itself. And with Dropbox, you are not limited to the iWork suite, but can share all your files.3

Photo Galleries

The web galleries are nicely done.

The last way to share content with Dropbox is with your photos. Under the Photo sub-folder, any sub-folder below that is given a web address that contains your image files in a nice gallery view.

All in all, Dropbox gives you great options for working with others, whether with view only access or full access. All in a package that fits nicely in with the OS.

Usage

A last few points on usage. In Jon Hicks’ post that I linked to above, he mentions using the application Leap because he preferred the way it allows him to add new, search for, tag and view his files (especially images). I liked the look of Leap as well, but at $75, I feel it’s little overpriced.

Viewing my files is not much of an issue for me, as I like the Finder views enough as well as the web interface4. So adding tags and moving my files easily were my needs.

And once again, I think Quicksilver nicely meets those needs. Your Dropbox folder is available to be added to your Quicksilver library, and once that is done all the Quicksilver actions can be used on your Dropbox contents. Here’s a sample of my workflow:

  • Take several images
  • Add tags
  • Move to applicable Dropbox folder5

Screenshots of this workflow in action can be seen in my Dropbox gallery here.

Like a lot of others, when working with my files, I like tools that leave my files in their original format. Dropbox does that while giving you ubiquitous access, revision history and various methods of collaboration. For me, it’s the best new piece of software I started using in 2008. So much that it’s an essential tool for 2009 and beyond.

  1. Jon Hicks went further and added the application Leap for easy tagging of files and multiple view options. But at the base of his solution, Dropbox met his needs by allowing him to work directly with the files themselves while being able to access them from anywhere and share with others. [↩]
  2. This seems to work only with certain files. For example, text files or PDFs will work, but a Pages document will not, You will have the option to “Share this” file rather than get a public link. [↩]
  3. The only spot where Dropbox may not please everyone is the notifications of an update to any shared files—but only if you don’t like the system wide notification utility Growl. That doesn’t describe me. I love Growl and I really appreciate the way the Dropbox team has integrated this tool. I’m notified everytime someone else updates a files. The only issue here is that you can miss the notification if you are away from your turned on and logged in computer—but there is always the web interface which keeps a nice log of all activity. [↩]
  4. The iPhone version of the web interface is also superb, as previously mentioned by others. [↩]
  5. For drag and drop fans, it’s easy to create a mouse trigger in QS so that a simple drop of all the files moves them to the desired location. [↩]