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Microsoft had what they called "placeholders" and it worked great, but it did confuse some users who looked for a file, saw it was "there" and happily went offl

Microsoft had what they called "placeholders" and it worked great, but it did confuse some users who looked for a file, saw it was "there" and happily went offline. Only to find it was only a placeholder. Furthermore, on devices with limited storage (phones, tablets) even the small size of the placeholders becomes a problem when the number of files is big enough. So Microsoft temporarily removed the placeholders functionality, promising to bring it back in the near future using some new (at the time not yet invented?) technique that would solve the problem.

manigandham 10y ago
Onedrive had similar same icon overlays to notify if the file was really downloaded or not. Dropbox is going to run into the same problem with placeholders where people go offline thinking they have the entire file.
- SolarNet 10y ago
  This is a tools problem. People need to know how to use the tools in a business or let them go. You don't keep carpenter around who blames power tools not working the way he expects when he never charges the batteries. Dropbox's response could be, "Hey we have training seminars for that".
amatwl 10y ago
App compatibility was also an issue with OneDrive placeholders (some apps couldn't handle placeholders). I wonder if Dropbox is going to run into similar issues with Project Infinite/
derefr 10y ago
Ignoring OneDrive et al, Windows has had this built in for a long long time: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc960878.aspx https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc960878.aspx. There's even a little Explorer-native file overlay for such files (a black clock): https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030827-00/?p=42783 https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030827-00/?p=... I wonder if Dropbox could just make use of this (e.g. by registering itself as an HSM backend provider to Windows somehow) rather than doing its own logic.

manigandham 10y ago

Onedrive had similar same icon overlays to notify if the file was really downloaded or not. Dropbox is going to run into the same problem with placeholders where people go offline thinking they have the entire file.

SolarNet 10y ago
This is a tools problem. People need to know how to use the tools in a business or let them go. You don't keep carpenter around who blames power tools not working the way he expects when he never charges the batteries. Dropbox's response could be, "Hey we have training seminars for that".

amatwl 10y ago

App compatibility was also an issue with OneDrive placeholders (some apps couldn't handle placeholders). I wonder if Dropbox is going to run into similar issues with Project Infinite/

derefr 10y ago

Ignoring OneDrive et al, Windows has had this built in for a long long time: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc960878.aspx https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc960878.aspx. There's even a little Explorer-native file overlay for such files (a black clock): https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030827-00/?p=42783 https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20030827-00/?p=... I wonder if Dropbox could just make use of this (e.g. by registering itself as an HSM backend provider to Windows somehow) rather than doing its own logic.