11/16/2023 0 Comments Dropshare cloud![]() So today I’m screen-scraping the new webapp to get a copy of my uploads, to take them somewhere else. I shivered with horror just writing that. Apparently, adding a toggle between grid and list view requires sending two JS strings full of an entire page worth of HTML, and using an if/else statement to decide which HTML string to dump into the page to be visible. In a final bit of horror to me, as a web developer, I just noticed that the entire contents of every page on the new website is rendered directly from a Javascript string full of HTML. This is the exact opposite of what I want in a personal file sharing service. But this week, I found out that the new webapp doesn’t have an API! They threw it away, and then said “Curious what you used the API for?” when I complained about it being gone on Twitter.Įven though the new web app launched 6 months ago, and still doesn’t have search or an API, it has new features that CloudApp has put enormous effort into promoting: call to action buttons directly on uploads! So if I want to… sell someone something… from my uploaded screenshot… I can do that. If something went wrong, I could easily pull all my data out using a Ruby library maintained by the company itself, which is very reassuring. The old web app had an API, making me feel comfortable about keeping my files in someone else’s service. I can’t sort them, I can’t search them, I can only click through all 221 pages hoping my eyes find the old upload I am looking for. It shows me 221 pages of uploads, in chronological order. The old web app had search by file name, date, upload type, and even the colors present in the image. Even today, every time I open the Mac app menu to see my uploaded files, the tiny modal window includes a prominent button that says “Need a TEAM? Sign up today!”. To add insult to injury, it also gained prominent buttons telling me to sign up for a team. ![]() The new Mac app lost the ability to copy direct links to images to the clipboard, and didn’t get it back for months. Calling it an upgrade was absolutely a lie: it was a completely different app, and much, much worse. The Mac app started aggressively telling me that I was using an obsolete version of CloudApp and I “need to upgrade soon”. □Īfter a while, teams wasn’t even enough. I don’t need a team, and it absolutely sucks that you are showing me ads even though I pay $10/mo. Sadly, over the past few years, CloudApp has been incredibly pushy and aggressive about how much I should be using “CloudApp Teams”. That’s completely understandable, especially given my understanding that the tiny team wasn’t even making a living from it at the time. Later, I discovered that I was friends with someone who would listen to my complaints and feature requests (<3 and that made it even better.Įventually, the service changed hands, sold to a holding company that believed they could turn it into a dramatically more profitable business. ![]() When I started, it had a cleverly short url ( cl.ly), an open API, a native Mac app, multiple RubyGems. (RIP Skitch, you were amazing until Evernote bought you.) The appeal of “you take your screenshots and there is always a permanent link directly to them in the clipboard” made me feel like it was worth paying for. The screenshot taking and markup is more or less copied from an earlier app, Skitch. The concept is pretty simple: you get a keyboard shortcut and a menu bar icon that let you upload a screenshot or file, and your clipboard fills with a URL you can paste. It was a pioneer in a service category that’s incredibly busy today, full of companies like Droplr, Jumpshare, Dropshare, and honestly way more than I could possibly name. Migrating off CloudApp (to Dropbox + Dropshare) ![]()
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