16 ms·

Dropbox Paper

322 points by dumindunuwan 10y ago

mikenew 10y ago
As a former user of both Mailbox and Carousel, I think I'll pass.
- hackcrafter 10y ago
  Were those not acquisitions that withered as opposed to Dropbox new product ventures? To be honest, I read through that whole page and I really am not sure I understand what "Paper" is. I'm guessing it's like slack + specialized components (lists/document snippets) and file sharing designed around collaborating on a product or more generally a project...
  - ukd1 10y ago
    Paper is a cross between a wiki and a google doc. It was based on https://hackpad.com/ https://hackpad.com/ from what I heard!
    - asidiali 10y ago
      Dropbox actually bought Hackpad and this is the fruit of that acquisition.
    - coldtea 10y ago
      Hackpad, otoh, which I've used for years, is nothing like a wiki and more like a half arsed google doc.
  - mikenew 10y ago
    Mailbox was an acquisition. Carousel was launched by Dropbox, but it came out of their acquisition of Snapjoy. The problem wasn't simply that they shuttered the services (particularly Mailbox), it was how they did it. Mailbox spent about a year with development completely stagnated. Essential features like searching were broken and Dropbox's response was "we're refactoring! Don't worry, big updates coming soon, please be patient!" And that went on right up until they said "Okay bye!" Services get shut down. It sucks, but it happens. But stringing your customers along for a year knowing perfectly well that your product is not being worked on is pretty awful.
  - tomkin 10y ago
    >> Were those not acquisitions that withered as opposed to Dropbox new product ventures? This is one of those distinctions without a difference.
  - whywhywhywhy 10y ago
    >Were those not acquisitions that withered as opposed to Dropbox new product ventures? Why on earth should that make any difference to the end user? Bottom line is they shipped them and then canned them.
xutopia 10y ago
So essentially it's Google Wave but in a vertical layout.
- azinman2 10y ago
  Except far more focused
  - llccbb 10y ago
    And named after a ubiquitous wood product
sz4kerto 10y ago
It's a very nice service, I've started to use it for personal notes instead of Onenote, but I have the feeling that MS will stay behind Onenote way after Dropbox has shut down Paper.
dmd 10y ago
What about it? This was released in October 2015.
- paglia_s 10y ago
  I think it was released as a beta while this is the general rollout
- criddell 10y ago
  Do you use it? What do you think about it?
  - dmd 10y ago
    I've tried it. It's kind of a joke, compared to Google or Microsoft's offerings in the same space.
- ssully 10y ago
  Possibly reposted in response to the recent release of Box Notes[1]? My team uses Box, so all last week I saw multiple emails and posts about Box Notes, so I could be drawing a connection that isn't there. Either way neither Paper nor Notes seem useful to me. [1]: https://www.box.com/notes https://www.box.com/notes
ukd1 10y ago
We've used this since the hackpad days at Rainforest; it's actually great - mainly spreadsheets!
paglia_s 10y ago
I really like the idea but I just tried the Android app and is super buggy. Text formatting doesn't work, it seems impossible to delete docs... And that's just what I found in 5 minutes of use
vonklaus 10y ago
Finally, they released google docs. I jest, buy I am going to give them (Dropbox) another shot. Google docs is very frustrating. From dumping me into an unorganized pile of text w/o folders to just enough features to make it complicated to do basic stuff but bot enough to do advanced...or even normal stuff. Dropbox has done some annoying stuff w/ their offerings, but i'm going to try paper out and if I don't get burned after a few months i'll upgrade to paid.
- harshaw 10y ago
  Google docs organization is a mess. Honestly, I think an old school file system hierarchy that everyone sees would be better. Paper seems like wave (not google docs), and you really need a spreedsheet feature to have a competitive product IMO.
  - lylo 10y ago
    Google Drive for Teams is coming soon which I'm hoping will solve a lot of these problems https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2016/11/google-team-drives-early-adopter.html?m=1 https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2016/11/google-team-dri...
huac 10y ago
The other notable "Google Docs/Office killer" is Quip. Previous HN discussion of that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12205855 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12205855 My gripe with these is that after using Word, these feel rigid and not full featured enough. And only with Google docs do you get what realtime collaboration should feel like.
- rrdharan 10y ago
  I have not used Quip. I used to work on Dropbox Paper, and I now work at Google (again) and use Google Docs for work documents (for obvious reasons) while I keep personal stuff in Paper. IMO Paper's realtime collaboration experience is superior to Google Docs. I'm curious to know if you've tried it and what you find better about Google Docs?
  - huac 10y ago
    Actually, I was thinking of Quip when I wrote that. Quip locks the entire paragraph that is being changed, so others cannot work on the same paragraph. This is less than ideal. I actually do think Dropbox Paper is pretty good for collab, so that wasn't initially fair. My favorite feature is seeing who contributed to which line of the document. I do find both Quip and Paper more suited to notes than documents, however. Writing a formal doc feels odd when your defaults aren't 12 pt Times New Roman, but maybe that won't be a consideration in five years. After all, there's some dissonance in saying "this is too pretty to use."
1_2__3 10y ago
I can smell a favored executive's pet project stink from all the way over here. And I'm not even pooh-poohing Dropbox - I love them and use them religiously.
tschellenbach 10y ago
We used for a few rounds of design frontend review. It's actually quite slick. Seems like it's 90% there for a google docs replacement.
- Cyph0n 10y ago
  And Google Docs is X% there as a MS Office replacement.
  - andybak 10y ago
    Does Office have robust real-time simultaneous editing. I imagine Office 365 might have (does it?) - but how about desktop Office? Genuine question. I'm asking about Word, Excel and Powerpoint.
    - Cyph0n 10y ago
      I used the Office collaboration features last with Office 2013 on Windows, and they were quite primitive. Basically, the document is synced with OneDrive. The online version of Office has realtime collaboration AFAIK.
coleifer 10y ago
Nobody's going to use this. Seriously, Dropbox.
- petetnt 10y ago
  We are using it all day every day at our offices, it's a superb shared Notepad that combines speed, simplicity, robust media features (such as embed, code blocks...), notification system, Dropbox integration and share-ability into a tight little package. Haven't looked back to Google Docs ever since.
ungzd 10y ago
After looking at landing page, it's completely unclear what it is. Powerpoint with comments? Pinterest for enterprise? Google Wave with Material design? "Create, review, organize" — but even Quake level editor is about creating, reviewing and organizing.
- OedipusRex 10y ago
  I would describe it as a feature for a target audience. /s They took a ton of screen real estate just to show us pictures of people typing into non-descriptive text-editors and people use laptops.
  - joshbert 10y ago
    My immediate thought was "another Dropbox project that'll be sunset in a year's time, huh?"
    - OedipusRex 10y ago
      They Google'd it.
  - desireco42 10y ago
    Nice jab!
- brianpgordon 10y ago
  Google Wave is exactly what I thought of. Like Wave, this is a polished, high-quality, sexy solution for a problem that simply doesn't exist. People are going to ooh and aah over it, and then keep using Slack and Google Docs. s/Wave/Paper in this Wave obituary from 2010: > Wave brought together elements of instant messaging, e-mail, microblogging, and collaborative editing in a single service that strongly emphasized concurrency and rich media. ... Despite its prodigious sophistication under the hood, the service never resonated with its target audience. Regular end users saw it as a mismatched amalgamation of disparate messaging paradigms blended together in a cumbersome Web-based interface. https://arstechnica.com/business/2010/08/wave-cancellation-google-gives-up-on-next-gen-messaging/ https://arstechnica.com/business/2010/08/wave-cancellation-g...
citrusui 10y ago
It's not terrible. Personally, since I write in Markdown, it's an excellent tool for my niche documents. It doesn't integrate with Jekyll, but it's close enough. Simplenote is another decent app that happens to have Markdown support, but the implementation isn't very good. No image previews, no tables, and on occasion it will outright mess up the formatting in `code blocks`. Of course, I am very hesistant to put my full trust into Dropbox. Their Mac app has been known to work around security measures in macOS[0]. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12619722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12619722 An another note, does anyone here have a suggestion for a good Notes app with Markdown and/or Jekyll support? Preferably one with a mobile app as well.
- asidiali 10y ago
  IMO all the current MD editors/previewers stink for some reason. I spent 10 min throwing together http://mrkdwn.pro http://mrkdwn.pro - you can feed it any direct MD file URL and it will render it in Github flavored markdown. You can also directly go to a file like so: http://mrkdwn.pro/#/?url= http://mrkdwn.pro/#/?url= and then add the URL to your MD file at the end. Definitely not fully featured or anything, but a dead simple way to share and read markdown files on the go.
howfun 10y ago
It is not April 1st right?
ficho 10y ago
Is this some sort of Etherpad revival? :) Would be awesome
- rrdharan 10y ago
  In a way, yes. See grinich's comment which explains the chronology/genealogy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13524866 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13524866
dboreham 10y ago
Pied Piper. I mean..Paper.
binaryanomaly 10y ago
I'm using Dropbox Paper since quite a while and I love it. For PCs it is completely browser based and therefore works nicely on every platform - no native apps needed. It has mobile apps. I cancelled my Evernote subscription and account on the spot. The only real downside at the moment from my point of view is that it does not yet have an offline mode.
aduffy 10y ago
Are they simply taking this out of beta? I've been using paper for over a year now, it's a lot like Quip but integrated with Dropbox
ktta 10y ago
Another closed file format. I think we're are in need of a lightweight document format, which is more complex than markdown, but needn't be as complex as docx. A quick google shows some results which look like pet projects of small business which have obviously failed (since I've never heard of them before) All of these new document formats that are pushed by big companies (some are really great I actually love using Google Docs) try to tie the user as close to their eco-system as possible. When ever I try to maintain documents for long term storage, markdown seems like the only good format. I've seen people talk about stuff like org-mode, etc, but they all lack the fluidity and the WYSIWYG nature of Google docs, docx etc. I'm talking about how markdown never actually stores pictures inside the document, but just links to them, and you'll have to use a specific application to view the rendered markdown, and a different one to edit or make new ones. I'm interested to see that does everyone else use for documents? And please don't suggest docx+open/libre office. I'm still waiting for some of those applications to properly handle a big file and I don't want to wait so long for those applications to even open. EDIT: Thanks for the replies. I think I should clarify something. I'm looking for a WYSISWYG tool, like google docs/docx. I don't really have time to spend doing the edit->render->see where you went wrong->edit cycle. This really hurts productivity when you're editing large documents and increases the barrier for new comers. I do use LaTeX but only when I need ultra sharp looking documents with specific needs. I really like it, but only pull it out when I need to write a paper and want the output in PDF. Other times, it's really not worth the effort. So formats which require me to render to HTML etc, are a no go. I'm looking into ASCIIDOC but even that looks like it's very similar to markdown. And by WYSISWYG, I mean I want to type, and press Ctrl+B to write in bold, and Ctrl+I for italic and right click to insert hyperlink and so on. Not use asterisks everytime whenever I want to make something bold. Sure it transparently to that in the background, but I shouldn't have to worry about it.
- raam86 10y ago
  are you talking about HTML? w3c got it figured out, or do you mean LaTeX?
  - wodenokoto 10y ago
    There is no HTML-container format, so you cannot create a multimedia HTML document (singular)
debt 10y ago
Huh? Hopefully they didn't waste a ton of resources on this. I doubt there even exists a market large enough to justify this.
bjoernm 10y ago
In case you're looking for a more wiki-like experience that supports internal links, markdown, and real-time editing check out https://www.nuclino.com https://www.nuclino.com (I'm a Co-Founder)
thepumpkin1979 10y ago
I can't believe they spent 3 years on this, I can do all this and more with Quip as a super performant native Mobile and native Desktop. The killing feature of Quip is it's ability to Mix, in a single document, an spreadsheet(most of what you'd use in Excel), formatted source code, images, todo-list, mentions & collaboration, version control and rich formatting. The desktop app is a mix of web and native, but is not a memory hog like a CEF app, it's pretty slick.
- petetnt 10y ago
  Everything that you said in that post also applies to Dropbox Paper, sans the desktop app which Dropbox doesn't (AFAIK) offer.
  - thepumpkin1979 10y ago
    Really? I couldn't find the spreadsheet, the table functionality is like Markdown-like tables to me
    - petetnt 10y ago
      Yeah, sorry my bad, the table functionality is not nearly a replacement for spreadsheets, we have been using Numbers / Excel / Google Sheets and embedded those to the document if we have needed more robust data tables.
kisna72 10y ago
anybody else noticed incredible resemblence to quip.com?
ende 10y ago
I don't know if this replaces google docs for me (for any serious document editing), but it may possibly replace Evernote as a simple jot pad.
qz_ 10y ago
But what does it, you know, do?
kennysmoothx 10y ago
Any one have an idea on what pricing will be moving forward? Can't seem to find it anywhere.
tekacs 10y ago
I'll throw Notion (https://notion.so/ https://notion.so/) into the mix here, as an (as far as I can tell far more full-featured) alternative to this. I've used Paper a number of times, starting from long before Notion was a thing, having been a happy Etherpad and Hackpad user in the past. Somehow Paper managed to inspire less in my collaborators than either the latter services (where perhaps plain text was the factor) or than Notion (the reaction of almost everyone I've shown it to has been amazement and excitement). Since this is the second time I'm mentioning Notion here, I'll reiterate that I'm not affiliated - just a happy customer.
- 5_minutes 10y ago
  Notion looks really good, I am going to give it a go. What I like especially is that for a small 3 person team, just starting, it's price friendly. This in contrary to many other similar apps.
- acchow 10y ago
  Looking at the landing page, I have built some hypothetical mental model on how to use the app and its feature, but it's mostly guessing - it would be awesome if they put up a video showcasing real-world usage and features. "Task Board, Design Specs, Knowledge Base, Coding Docs, Team Handbook, Roadmap" - are these possible use-cases of the system? Or are they disparate document types? You create a document and pick one of these types which determines its features and layout? "lets you nest pages inside each other" - does this mean hyperlinking? "No more markup" - so WYSIWYG, just like Google Docs, Quip, MS Office, etc? "Love using Trello" - I don't know what Trello is. There's Slack notifications, but can you @tag people?
  - tekacs 10y ago
    Use cases, kinda, yes, https://trello.com/ https://trello.com/, yes. I started explaining all of these in depth, but aspects of it would take an order of magnitude more text to explain than they would to simply experience first-hand - I'd encourage you to instead simply try out the first page of the demo experience, which I think would be dramatically more information-packed.
  - 10y ago
fiatjaf 10y ago
What about that office suite that does the same and much more, in a much prettier way, which even includes full-featured embedded spreadsheets in the documents? I mean Quip: https://quip.com/ https://quip.com/
- fiatjaf 10y ago
  I thought Quip was a relatively small company and I liked them for that. But now somehow they have a SALESFORCE brand.
  - rrdharan 10y ago
    Salesforce acquired Quip last year.
isarat 10y ago
Initially when Paper was launched I tried and left the product quickly. I was using Quip a lot for my work as it's more developer friendly and easy to manage. I use Paper more and more these days with my team though we are into Google for Work. Google Docs is a tough cookie and an office replica. Those who are in to markdown, they would hardly go back to anything else for formatting. The only catch with markdown is about creating tables Dropbox paper has nailed it pretty well. The product is more pleasing for eyes with better typography, cleaner design and user experience. There's no friction to write. The people who collaborates are more productive easily review and feedback. Also it's more developer friendly with quick emojis with ":" shortcut. Finally nothing beats the simplicity of Dropbox Sharing. The product has lot more opportunities to grow. Expecting more integrations in the coming days.
- kgen 10y ago
  Ditto, I was lucky enough to try out the beta a year ago, and since then, I've been using it more and more compared to Docs or even text files (for event planning, side projects, server docs, etc). The markdown integration, especially for inlining code, is awesome and what Docs should have been. Being able to quickly make a checklist has also change my note taking behavior and I almost never use straight up text files or specific list apps anymore. That said, they recently changed their UI to hide the starred docs from the side bar which really makes them harder to find, and I actually find the inline dropbox file links/tables fidgety. But all in all, it's pretty awesome at reducing the friction between mind to note.
- clay_to_n 10y ago
  Do you still use Quip at all? Paper looks nice, but I don't see any reason to switch from Quip.
  - isarat 10y ago
    Quip is a great product. I don't use it these days. I like everything about Quip except it's unconventional formatting shortcuts. I have tried various markdown based tools both mobile and web and finally I found Paper is appealing and strikes a balance between visual appeal, share and collaboration. Paper also syncs very small chunks of text (sentence level?) and it reduce conflicts a lot. Though I have used multiple tools for collaboration, the current version of Paper and Google Docs tops the list with my team.
Angostura 10y ago
All these lovely services in the comments that I would love to use at work, but I can't because, I'm in the UK, working with somewhat sensitive personal data and there is no way we can commit that stuff to a data centre in the U.S somewhere these days. I'm not sure what the solution is, other than letting people self-host.
- nicolas314 10y ago
  Second this. All these fancy services are neat but hosting private data in the US is seen in Europe as a major security risk, when it's not a complete no-no. Would be cool to know about self-hosted options.
  - HarveyKandola 10y ago
    At the risk of getting down-voted for self-promotion... For self-hosting try https://github.com/documize/community https://github.com/documize/community -- WYSIWYG or Markdown, integrate data from Trello, GitHub, or roll your own integration. Still early days yet, but you should get a feel for docs/wiki/SaaS data embedding.
    - Angostura 10y ago
      Thank you. I wil. Take s look.
sosedoff 10y ago
Similar, but specifically tailored for Markdown: https://usecanvas.com/ https://usecanvas.com/
djhworld 10y ago
I used this quite a lot over the past 6 months, for personal note taking (didn't use any of the team/collaboration features or whatever) It's pretty nice, supports inline LaTeX, embedding youtube, spotify, images, tweets, PDFs, google docs and has a good markdown parser. I've recently moved over to org-mode though, mainly because there are more features (although it doesn't support the rich media things like embedded videos etc, but has good enough solutions for images and LaYeX)
vonklaus 10y ago
After looking this over again, it kind of seems like a blogging platform. I'm going to DL it later, but looks like it could be a sneaky way for them to enter the content publishing space.
sp332 10y ago
"However you think — in words, code, pictures or motion — Paper brings it all together in one place." Can you really communication in "motion" on this site?
divan 10y ago
I'm using Paper for 2+ years now, including for some team projects, and it literally makes me want to write docs and documentation.
rrggrr 10y ago
Between Evernote, Office360 and Google Drive/Docs, etc. I'm of the opinion this was wasted time and money; and that it will not be a revenue or user growth driver for Dropbox. There are gaps in sharing and collaboration where paid demand exists. They include: end-to-end persistent encrypted sharing; File authentication; handwriting recognition/search; rule and ML based box culling; content-aware rules; mesh-network sharing; blockchain integration; content analysis for sourcing/data-viz; and so much more. I sense a lack of imagination at Dropbox.
- rrdharan 10y ago
  Dropbox's enterprise offering includes OCR with handwriting recognition: https://www.engadget.com/2016/06/22/dropbox-ios-app-scanning-sharing-files/ https://www.engadget.com/2016/06/22/dropbox-ios-app-scanning... I believe it was previously discussed on HN but I can't find the link anymore, anyway they go into detail on the implementation here: https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2016/08/fast-and-accurate-document-detection-for-scanning/ https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2016/08/fast-and-accurate-doc...
obeattie 10y ago
At Monzo where I work, we use Dropbox Paper quite extensively for internal RFC's in the engineering team. We'd probably prefer to use a Google product since the rest of the company uses Drive so heavily, but Docs is simply atrocious when you need to insert some code.
- lylo 10y ago
  Why don't you use GitHub (or similar) and markdown documents etc for this?
  - obeattie 10y ago
    Commenting is painful.
posnet 10y ago
I wonder if they are using operational transforms or CRDTs underneath for the collaborate editing.
- rrdharan 10y ago
  Operational transforms. https://github.com/ether/pad/tree/master/infrastructure/ace https://github.com/ether/pad/tree/master/infrastructure/ace (I used to work on Dropbox Paper)
mgiannopoulos 10y ago
Feels like a Confluence competitor actually
pducks32 10y ago
I'm sorry but that first video is hilarious. That's the stuff Silicon Valley HBO makes fun of. I'm all for people working together to make the world a better place but I was in tears of laughter at that. I was looking for a (Made by HBO) disclaimer somewhere.
- Alex3917 10y ago
  The product itself looks great. But paying some marketing firm to dress up Instagram models in outfits designed to evoke the feeling of a greek village seems like a questionable use of money.
bachmeier 10y ago
I've been using the beta for quite a while. I haven't used it extensively, but I will probably use it more once it takes off. Early on in the beta process I requested Mathjax support. They added it, and now all you have to do to insert an equation is type a double dollar sign (ie, $$). That's sort of a killer feature, because most of my communications will involve equations at some point.
eatbitseveryday 10y ago
Very close in name to an existing tool, Papers [1], which is meant for organizing research papers. [1] http://papersapp.com/ http://papersapp.com/
- geoffpado 10y ago
  Also the (now defunct) Paper by Facebook (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Paper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Paper), and Paper by FiftyThree (http://www.fiftythree.com http://www.fiftythree.com)
rcymerys 10y ago
I just hope it doesn't end like Mailbox. What I love about Paper (compared to Google Docs and similar tools) is it's simplicity. Formatting options are extremely limited, so all you have to do is just to type and it'll lay the document out for you. This is actually the best feature, since you don't waste time adjusting tab stops and figuring out how to make bullet lists work (which was like 50% of my time when writing documents in regular editors).
joshpadnick 10y ago
Very thoughtfully designed. I liked it better than Quip. But all our docs are in Google Docs, which sometimes includes spreadsheets, which doesn't appear supported. The very nice UX around collaboration isn't enough to justify the migration pain of moving hundreds of Google Docs and losing some of our gdoc non-text docs.
- desireco42 10y ago
  Nothing is better then Quip! :)
overcast 10y ago
This reminds me of OneNote on the web. With fancier animations, and less functionality.
Grue3 10y ago
I'm impressed how the landing page is completely localized in Russian. Even the screenshots. You can switch the language in the selector at the bottom with like 20 different languages. Pretty cool for a small(?) company like Dropbox.
trumbitta2 10y ago
I hate it when a website takes over my preferences and sets the language to Italian solely based on my IP. Hate. It.
- exodust 10y ago
  On the subject of annoyances with this page, I hate that everything is spaced out so much. So little information spread over a huge scrolling area. I thought this fad was dying out, but apparently not. So unnecessary and looks awful on a large monitor.
sagivo 10y ago
dropbox evolution: sync files - Google Drive sync photos - Google Photos sync docs that are like websites and also track progress and chat and tons of other features you don't really need but will be shut down in a year!
poorman 10y ago
So like a Basecamp clone?
sambe 10y ago
I haven't tried it, but I get that familiar feeling: you are stepping outside of your core business in a way that will be easily shut down if not making targets. See Carousel in Dropbox's case (nice product, very few complaints, presumably little to zero profit) but companies tend to treat these as moonshots instead of new businesses - it has to be a roaring success to last.
morkro 10y ago
For anyone interested, I've build a desktop client for Dropbox Paper: https://github.com/morkro/papyrus https://github.com/morkro/papyrus
debt 10y ago
Man wtf Dropbox. There are literally thousands of smaller updates and increments you can be making to the product. This type of stuff doesn't have a market! Fire your design team and start over. It will keep not working!
atmosx 10y ago
Apparently at this year and age, communicating what a product does, is a real challenge.
philfreo 10y ago
I love Dropbox Paper. The way I explain it is: It's like Google Docs if it was designed today instead of a decade ago. My team uses it instead of Google Docs for Feature Specs, Meeting Notes, etc.
jest3r1 10y ago
It's an operating theatre though. These and other features may require our systems to access, store and scan Your Stuff. You give us permission to do those things, and this permission extends to our affiliates and trusted third parties we work with. So, in order to work on collaborative documents, I give Dropbox, Dropbox affiliates and trusted third parties access? Who are these people? Others working for Dropbox. Dropbox uses certain trusted third parties (for example providers of customer support and IT services) to help us provide, improve, protect and promote our Services. These third parties will access your information only to perform tasks on our behalf ... https://www.dropbox.com/terms https://www.dropbox.com/terms Maybe not so great for business data privacy compliance then? I know it's not just Dropbox, but the idea that I'm creating business content in some pseudo-document format that an unspecified number of people, including outsourced IT, have access to is unsettling. It's a gold mine for Dropbox of course. They control the document format, making it really easy to data mine. They know exactly what everyone is working on. Your team spends hours planning bigger, brighter ideas, and someone is watching. And they hold us hostage forever. Export is .docx only and the export formatting is atrocious, non usable. What ever happened to encryption for cloud-based services? We're giving all our data away. -- Now, with all that said, Dropbox Paper does solve a number of problems businesses face. The bare bones editor, overall simplicity, and elimination of the traditional file format makes it really easy to use, especially when collaborating with folks that may not create documents every day. Paper docs are giving Basecamp, non-developer Confluence Pages (JIRA) and web hosting at our office a run for the money. Because it doesn't feel bloated. Plus, there's too many options for these types of business productivity tools at the moment. Simpler is better in this regard, as navigating all of the options, and training people, is a project nobody really wants to commit to. At least not at our office. That makes Dropbox Paper a good fit for something.
- rrdharan 10y ago
  > Export is .docx only and the export formatting is atrocious, non usable. You can also export as MarkDown.
rpearl 10y ago
This has been around for a while? I'm not sure why this is surfacing on HN now. Here's an article from 2015: https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/15/dropbox-announces-paper-a-google-docs-competitor/#.6qjorz:OU6K https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/15/dropbox-announces-paper-a-...
cjmcqueen 10y ago
It's Google Wave.
andy_ppp 10y ago
I have almost this idea too with some interesting twists; it's probably going to be hard to complete with Dropbox though as a one man team. At least this is only a component of what I plan to build and probably the least important bit...
samstave 10y ago
Regarding some of the sentiments in this thread... I have to agree... How exactly does this help me/large teams? Their customer list, sure, has "cool names" -- but the workflow support this provides seems to focus on 19 year old college grads who were forced to do group projects and have only ever touched a macbook air. "beautiful interface" -- do you know how many pitches (including multiple companies from the decades past) attempted to sell their idea on "clean UI" failed and failed and failed? Look if this works for you - then use it - but a white dude and an asian chick sitting in a clean room with a mac thinking about their "marketing" is pretty boring. So - what does this do? How about show me the problem the two in the landing are working on... --- "Before - we were trying to get the reqs from the PM to the devs based on the input from the marketing research of what our customers were asking for WRT features... the pipeline was clogged and nobody was on the same page... emails, PPTs, MTGs etc - nothing worked... then we brought in this new tool - spent a month and a half selling it to the devs to get them to actually create a fucking account, and 18 months later - we are 3% more effective than we were before!" YAY! Sorry - thats how I see tools like such, "Lets disrupt 40 years of DNA on a particular workflow that our experienced devs have been using by showing them a lot of minimalistic whitespace and hi-res stock photos!" how about turn this into a slack hook and let the devs do their thing and be up-front that this is for marketing and PMs and the devs should never see it. It should create requests of (producer of widget) via whatever method that (producer of widget) is used to.... or... found your freaking startup from day-one on a freaking tool... Finally, it would seem that things like this are relegated to very small teams - and you should be wary of attempting to get other groups in your co to drink your cool UI kool-aid. /cynicism...
whywhywhywhy 10y ago
Just find it utterly surprising anyone is willing to invest time bringing Dropbox products (other than their core storage product) into their workflow considering their track record of killing off even popular products.
smpetrey 10y ago
The iOS app is a complete mess. I can't delete notes, I can't access Archives, I can't rename folders nor delete them. I can't move notes between folders. This leads me to believe the app was rushed but apparently there's a version history I the App Store. I left as much feedback as I could through the app but man, yikes.
wahsd 10y ago
Is is just me or is that "whimsy" of the gutsy images/animations getting old?
antoncohen 10y ago
Dropbox Paper is fantastic. You can write Markdown, or use GUI menus. Inline code and code blocks are great, just like normal Markdown. Great for meetings notes, design docs, anything you want to share and collaborate on. So much nicer to write in than Google Docs. It is designed for digital, not as an MS Word clone. I like writing in Paper so much that I use it to write things I'm not going to share via Paper. I actual copy and paste out of Paper into email or Google Docs when I work for companies that don't use Paper. I'll write things like READMEs in Paper first, before moving them to a .md file. The UX is so well thought out. For example, the link creation is so simple. You copy a URL, like from the URL bar, then highlight the text in Paper that you want to be a link, and Cmd+V. The highlighted text will now be hyperlink to the URL on the clipboard. The mobile app is handy too.
- 140am 10y ago
  I had no idea there is a separate "Dropbox Paper" app
mychael 10y ago
The comments on this thread remind me of Drew's "Throw away your USB Drive" post from 10 years ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
TuringTest 10y ago
> Sorry, there’s an issue connecting to the network. Once it reconnects, you’ll be able to edit your doc. This kills it for me. What good is a note-taking application if taking the notes depends on having network connectivity, 100℅ of the time? (The message appeared while writing, not even when trying to save). I though the whole point of Dropbox was having a local copy of the document, which was synchronized in the background? Why doesn't Paper work that way?
andygambles 10y ago
So is this essentially OneNote?
sebleon 10y ago
This is cool! On a related note, someone should make Sketch files collaborative in real time =D
elastic_church 10y ago
A tech product called paper, how original of a skeumorph to bygone relevance in a simplistic clear name about what the product actually does!
ematvey 10y ago
Honestly I don't see where all the sci-fi analogies and Wave comparisons are coming from. I've been using Paper in beta for several months now, and it is nothing more then a slick, streamlined version of the Etherpad , which arguably was a slick and streamlined version of Wave. It has all the features I used from GDocs, it is convenient and pleasant to look at. Long-form notes are very pleasant to write there. Note-taking aspect of this is definitely something they should explore more.
dandare 10y ago
Is Condoleezza Rice still working for Dropbox?
bluetidepro 10y ago
Does anyone know if they finally changed it with the official release so that when you make a document it actually stores a markdown file or html file somewhere in your actual dropbox? I absolutely hate how the current beta has it so it's disconnected. I want to be able to write stuff in paper but have access to the originals via sync so I can update them locally in maybe something like Sublime and just have it auto update in Paper itself.
anentropic 10y ago
Dropbox is too expensive
gorkamolero 10y ago
This is Quip, if they had a designer on board

Dropbox Paper

322 points by dumindunuwan 10y ago

mikenew 10y ago

As a former user of both Mailbox and Carousel, I think I'll pass.

hackcrafter 10y ago
Were those not acquisitions that withered as opposed to Dropbox new product ventures? To be honest, I read through that whole page and I really am not sure I understand what "Paper" is. I'm guessing it's like slack + specialized components (lists/document snippets) and file sharing designed around collaborating on a product or more generally a project...
- ukd1 10y ago
  Paper is a cross between a wiki and a google doc. It was based on https://hackpad.com/ https://hackpad.com/ from what I heard!
  - asidiali 10y ago
    Dropbox actually bought Hackpad and this is the fruit of that acquisition.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    Hackpad, otoh, which I've used for years, is nothing like a wiki and more like a half arsed google doc.
- mikenew 10y ago
  Mailbox was an acquisition. Carousel was launched by Dropbox, but it came out of their acquisition of Snapjoy. The problem wasn't simply that they shuttered the services (particularly Mailbox), it was how they did it. Mailbox spent about a year with development completely stagnated. Essential features like searching were broken and Dropbox's response was "we're refactoring! Don't worry, big updates coming soon, please be patient!" And that went on right up until they said "Okay bye!" Services get shut down. It sucks, but it happens. But stringing your customers along for a year knowing perfectly well that your product is not being worked on is pretty awful.
- tomkin 10y ago
  >> Were those not acquisitions that withered as opposed to Dropbox new product ventures? This is one of those distinctions without a difference.
- whywhywhywhy 10y ago
  >Were those not acquisitions that withered as opposed to Dropbox new product ventures? Why on earth should that make any difference to the end user? Bottom line is they shipped them and then canned them.

xutopia 10y ago

So essentially it's Google Wave but in a vertical layout.

azinman2 10y ago
Except far more focused
- llccbb 10y ago
  And named after a ubiquitous wood product

sz4kerto 10y ago

It's a very nice service, I've started to use it for personal notes instead of Onenote, but I have the feeling that MS will stay behind Onenote way after Dropbox has shut down Paper.

dmd 10y ago

What about it? This was released in October 2015.

paglia_s 10y ago
I think it was released as a beta while this is the general rollout
criddell 10y ago
Do you use it? What do you think about it?
- dmd 10y ago
  I've tried it. It's kind of a joke, compared to Google or Microsoft's offerings in the same space.
ssully 10y ago
Possibly reposted in response to the recent release of Box Notes[1]? My team uses Box, so all last week I saw multiple emails and posts about Box Notes, so I could be drawing a connection that isn't there. Either way neither Paper nor Notes seem useful to me. [1]: https://www.box.com/notes https://www.box.com/notes

ukd1 10y ago

We've used this since the hackpad days at Rainforest; it's actually great - mainly spreadsheets!

paglia_s 10y ago

I really like the idea but I just tried the Android app and is super buggy. Text formatting doesn't work, it seems impossible to delete docs... And that's just what I found in 5 minutes of use

vonklaus 10y ago

Finally, they released google docs. I jest, buy I am going to give them (Dropbox) another shot. Google docs is very frustrating. From dumping me into an unorganized pile of text w/o folders to just enough features to make it complicated to do basic stuff but bot enough to do advanced...or even normal stuff. Dropbox has done some annoying stuff w/ their offerings, but i'm going to try paper out and if I don't get burned after a few months i'll upgrade to paid.

harshaw 10y ago
Google docs organization is a mess. Honestly, I think an old school file system hierarchy that everyone sees would be better. Paper seems like wave (not google docs), and you really need a spreedsheet feature to have a competitive product IMO.
- lylo 10y ago
  Google Drive for Teams is coming soon which I'm hoping will solve a lot of these problems https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2016/11/google-team-drives-early-adopter.html?m=1 https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2016/11/google-team-dri...

huac 10y ago

The other notable "Google Docs/Office killer" is Quip. Previous HN discussion of that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12205855 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12205855 My gripe with these is that after using Word, these feel rigid and not full featured enough. And only with Google docs do you get what realtime collaboration should feel like.

rrdharan 10y ago
I have not used Quip. I used to work on Dropbox Paper, and I now work at Google (again) and use Google Docs for work documents (for obvious reasons) while I keep personal stuff in Paper. IMO Paper's realtime collaboration experience is superior to Google Docs. I'm curious to know if you've tried it and what you find better about Google Docs?
- huac 10y ago
  Actually, I was thinking of Quip when I wrote that. Quip locks the entire paragraph that is being changed, so others cannot work on the same paragraph. This is less than ideal. I actually do think Dropbox Paper is pretty good for collab, so that wasn't initially fair. My favorite feature is seeing who contributed to which line of the document. I do find both Quip and Paper more suited to notes than documents, however. Writing a formal doc feels odd when your defaults aren't 12 pt Times New Roman, but maybe that won't be a consideration in five years. After all, there's some dissonance in saying "this is too pretty to use."

1_2__3 10y ago

I can smell a favored executive's pet project stink from all the way over here. And I'm not even pooh-poohing Dropbox - I love them and use them religiously.

tschellenbach 10y ago

We used for a few rounds of design frontend review. It's actually quite slick. Seems like it's 90% there for a google docs replacement.

Cyph0n 10y ago
And Google Docs is X% there as a MS Office replacement.
- andybak 10y ago
  Does Office have robust real-time simultaneous editing. I imagine Office 365 might have (does it?) - but how about desktop Office? Genuine question. I'm asking about Word, Excel and Powerpoint.
  - Cyph0n 10y ago
    I used the Office collaboration features last with Office 2013 on Windows, and they were quite primitive. Basically, the document is synced with OneDrive. The online version of Office has realtime collaboration AFAIK.

coleifer 10y ago

Nobody's going to use this. Seriously, Dropbox.

petetnt 10y ago
We are using it all day every day at our offices, it's a superb shared Notepad that combines speed, simplicity, robust media features (such as embed, code blocks...), notification system, Dropbox integration and share-ability into a tight little package. Haven't looked back to Google Docs ever since.

ungzd 10y ago

After looking at landing page, it's completely unclear what it is. Powerpoint with comments? Pinterest for enterprise? Google Wave with Material design? "Create, review, organize" — but even Quake level editor is about creating, reviewing and organizing.

OedipusRex 10y ago
I would describe it as a feature for a target audience. /s They took a ton of screen real estate just to show us pictures of people typing into non-descriptive text-editors and people use laptops.
- joshbert 10y ago
  My immediate thought was "another Dropbox project that'll be sunset in a year's time, huh?"
  - OedipusRex 10y ago
    They Google'd it.
- desireco42 10y ago
  Nice jab!
brianpgordon 10y ago
Google Wave is exactly what I thought of. Like Wave, this is a polished, high-quality, sexy solution for a problem that simply doesn't exist. People are going to ooh and aah over it, and then keep using Slack and Google Docs. s/Wave/Paper in this Wave obituary from 2010: > Wave brought together elements of instant messaging, e-mail, microblogging, and collaborative editing in a single service that strongly emphasized concurrency and rich media. ... Despite its prodigious sophistication under the hood, the service never resonated with its target audience. Regular end users saw it as a mismatched amalgamation of disparate messaging paradigms blended together in a cumbersome Web-based interface. https://arstechnica.com/business/2010/08/wave-cancellation-google-gives-up-on-next-gen-messaging/ https://arstechnica.com/business/2010/08/wave-cancellation-g...

citrusui 10y ago

It's not terrible. Personally, since I write in Markdown, it's an excellent tool for my niche documents. It doesn't integrate with Jekyll, but it's close enough. Simplenote is another decent app that happens to have Markdown support, but the implementation isn't very good. No image previews, no tables, and on occasion it will outright mess up the formatting in `code blocks`. Of course, I am very hesistant to put my full trust into Dropbox. Their Mac app has been known to work around security measures in macOS[0]. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12619722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12619722 An another note, does anyone here have a suggestion for a good Notes app with Markdown and/or Jekyll support? Preferably one with a mobile app as well.

asidiali 10y ago
IMO all the current MD editors/previewers stink for some reason. I spent 10 min throwing together http://mrkdwn.pro http://mrkdwn.pro - you can feed it any direct MD file URL and it will render it in Github flavored markdown. You can also directly go to a file like so: http://mrkdwn.pro/#/?url= http://mrkdwn.pro/#/?url= and then add the URL to your MD file at the end. Definitely not fully featured or anything, but a dead simple way to share and read markdown files on the go.

howfun 10y ago

It is not April 1st right?

ficho 10y ago

Is this some sort of Etherpad revival? :) Would be awesome

rrdharan 10y ago
In a way, yes. See grinich's comment which explains the chronology/genealogy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13524866 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13524866

dboreham 10y ago

Pied Piper. I mean..Paper.

binaryanomaly 10y ago

I'm using Dropbox Paper since quite a while and I love it. For PCs it is completely browser based and therefore works nicely on every platform - no native apps needed. It has mobile apps. I cancelled my Evernote subscription and account on the spot. The only real downside at the moment from my point of view is that it does not yet have an offline mode.

aduffy 10y ago

Are they simply taking this out of beta? I've been using paper for over a year now, it's a lot like Quip but integrated with Dropbox

ktta 10y ago

Another closed file format. I think we're are in need of a lightweight document format, which is more complex than markdown, but needn't be as complex as docx. A quick google shows some results which look like pet projects of small business which have obviously failed (since I've never heard of them before) All of these new document formats that are pushed by big companies (some are really great I actually love using Google Docs) try to tie the user as close to their eco-system as possible. When ever I try to maintain documents for long term storage, markdown seems like the only good format. I've seen people talk about stuff like org-mode, etc, but they all lack the fluidity and the WYSIWYG nature of Google docs, docx etc. I'm talking about how markdown never actually stores pictures inside the document, but just links to them, and you'll have to use a specific application to view the rendered markdown, and a different one to edit or make new ones. I'm interested to see that does everyone else use for documents? And please don't suggest docx+open/libre office. I'm still waiting for some of those applications to properly handle a big file and I don't want to wait so long for those applications to even open. EDIT: Thanks for the replies. I think I should clarify something. I'm looking for a WYSISWYG tool, like google docs/docx. I don't really have time to spend doing the edit->render->see where you went wrong->edit cycle. This really hurts productivity when you're editing large documents and increases the barrier for new comers. I do use LaTeX but only when I need ultra sharp looking documents with specific needs. I really like it, but only pull it out when I need to write a paper and want the output in PDF. Other times, it's really not worth the effort. So formats which require me to render to HTML etc, are a no go. I'm looking into ASCIIDOC but even that looks like it's very similar to markdown. And by WYSISWYG, I mean I want to type, and press Ctrl+B to write in bold, and Ctrl+I for italic and right click to insert hyperlink and so on. Not use asterisks everytime whenever I want to make something bold. Sure it transparently to that in the background, but I shouldn't have to worry about it.

raam86 10y ago
are you talking about HTML? w3c got it figured out, or do you mean LaTeX?
- wodenokoto 10y ago
  There is no HTML-container format, so you cannot create a multimedia HTML document (singular)

debt 10y ago

Huh? Hopefully they didn't waste a ton of resources on this. I doubt there even exists a market large enough to justify this.

bjoernm 10y ago

In case you're looking for a more wiki-like experience that supports internal links, markdown, and real-time editing check out https://www.nuclino.com https://www.nuclino.com (I'm a Co-Founder)

thepumpkin1979 10y ago

I can't believe they spent 3 years on this, I can do all this and more with Quip as a super performant native Mobile and native Desktop. The killing feature of Quip is it's ability to Mix, in a single document, an spreadsheet(most of what you'd use in Excel), formatted source code, images, todo-list, mentions & collaboration, version control and rich formatting. The desktop app is a mix of web and native, but is not a memory hog like a CEF app, it's pretty slick.

petetnt 10y ago
Everything that you said in that post also applies to Dropbox Paper, sans the desktop app which Dropbox doesn't (AFAIK) offer.
- thepumpkin1979 10y ago
  Really? I couldn't find the spreadsheet, the table functionality is like Markdown-like tables to me
  - petetnt 10y ago
    Yeah, sorry my bad, the table functionality is not nearly a replacement for spreadsheets, we have been using Numbers / Excel / Google Sheets and embedded those to the document if we have needed more robust data tables.

kisna72 10y ago

anybody else noticed incredible resemblence to quip.com?

ende 10y ago

I don't know if this replaces google docs for me (for any serious document editing), but it may possibly replace Evernote as a simple jot pad.

qz_ 10y ago

But what does it, you know, do?

kennysmoothx 10y ago

Any one have an idea on what pricing will be moving forward? Can't seem to find it anywhere.

tekacs 10y ago

I'll throw Notion (https://notion.so/ https://notion.so/) into the mix here, as an (as far as I can tell far more full-featured) alternative to this. I've used Paper a number of times, starting from long before Notion was a thing, having been a happy Etherpad and Hackpad user in the past. Somehow Paper managed to inspire less in my collaborators than either the latter services (where perhaps plain text was the factor) or than Notion (the reaction of almost everyone I've shown it to has been amazement and excitement). Since this is the second time I'm mentioning Notion here, I'll reiterate that I'm not affiliated - just a happy customer.

5_minutes 10y ago
Notion looks really good, I am going to give it a go. What I like especially is that for a small 3 person team, just starting, it's price friendly. This in contrary to many other similar apps.
acchow 10y ago
Looking at the landing page, I have built some hypothetical mental model on how to use the app and its feature, but it's mostly guessing - it would be awesome if they put up a video showcasing real-world usage and features. "Task Board, Design Specs, Knowledge Base, Coding Docs, Team Handbook, Roadmap" - are these possible use-cases of the system? Or are they disparate document types? You create a document and pick one of these types which determines its features and layout? "lets you nest pages inside each other" - does this mean hyperlinking? "No more markup" - so WYSIWYG, just like Google Docs, Quip, MS Office, etc? "Love using Trello" - I don't know what Trello is. There's Slack notifications, but can you @tag people?
- tekacs 10y ago
  Use cases, kinda, yes, https://trello.com/ https://trello.com/, yes. I started explaining all of these in depth, but aspects of it would take an order of magnitude more text to explain than they would to simply experience first-hand - I'd encourage you to instead simply try out the first page of the demo experience, which I think would be dramatically more information-packed.
- 10y ago

fiatjaf 10y ago

What about that office suite that does the same and much more, in a much prettier way, which even includes full-featured embedded spreadsheets in the documents? I mean Quip: https://quip.com/ https://quip.com/

fiatjaf 10y ago
I thought Quip was a relatively small company and I liked them for that. But now somehow they have a SALESFORCE brand.
- rrdharan 10y ago
  Salesforce acquired Quip last year.

isarat 10y ago

Initially when Paper was launched I tried and left the product quickly. I was using Quip a lot for my work as it's more developer friendly and easy to manage. I use Paper more and more these days with my team though we are into Google for Work. Google Docs is a tough cookie and an office replica. Those who are in to markdown, they would hardly go back to anything else for formatting. The only catch with markdown is about creating tables Dropbox paper has nailed it pretty well. The product is more pleasing for eyes with better typography, cleaner design and user experience. There's no friction to write. The people who collaborates are more productive easily review and feedback. Also it's more developer friendly with quick emojis with ":" shortcut. Finally nothing beats the simplicity of Dropbox Sharing. The product has lot more opportunities to grow. Expecting more integrations in the coming days.

kgen 10y ago
Ditto, I was lucky enough to try out the beta a year ago, and since then, I've been using it more and more compared to Docs or even text files (for event planning, side projects, server docs, etc). The markdown integration, especially for inlining code, is awesome and what Docs should have been. Being able to quickly make a checklist has also change my note taking behavior and I almost never use straight up text files or specific list apps anymore. That said, they recently changed their UI to hide the starred docs from the side bar which really makes them harder to find, and I actually find the inline dropbox file links/tables fidgety. But all in all, it's pretty awesome at reducing the friction between mind to note.
clay_to_n 10y ago
Do you still use Quip at all? Paper looks nice, but I don't see any reason to switch from Quip.
- isarat 10y ago
  Quip is a great product. I don't use it these days. I like everything about Quip except it's unconventional formatting shortcuts. I have tried various markdown based tools both mobile and web and finally I found Paper is appealing and strikes a balance between visual appeal, share and collaboration. Paper also syncs very small chunks of text (sentence level?) and it reduce conflicts a lot. Though I have used multiple tools for collaboration, the current version of Paper and Google Docs tops the list with my team.

Angostura 10y ago

All these lovely services in the comments that I would love to use at work, but I can't because, I'm in the UK, working with somewhat sensitive personal data and there is no way we can commit that stuff to a data centre in the U.S somewhere these days. I'm not sure what the solution is, other than letting people self-host.

nicolas314 10y ago
Second this. All these fancy services are neat but hosting private data in the US is seen in Europe as a major security risk, when it's not a complete no-no. Would be cool to know about self-hosted options.
- HarveyKandola 10y ago
  At the risk of getting down-voted for self-promotion... For self-hosting try https://github.com/documize/community https://github.com/documize/community -- WYSIWYG or Markdown, integrate data from Trello, GitHub, or roll your own integration. Still early days yet, but you should get a feel for docs/wiki/SaaS data embedding.
  - Angostura 10y ago
    Thank you. I wil. Take s look.

sosedoff 10y ago

Similar, but specifically tailored for Markdown: https://usecanvas.com/ https://usecanvas.com/

djhworld 10y ago

I used this quite a lot over the past 6 months, for personal note taking (didn't use any of the team/collaboration features or whatever) It's pretty nice, supports inline LaTeX, embedding youtube, spotify, images, tweets, PDFs, google docs and has a good markdown parser. I've recently moved over to org-mode though, mainly because there are more features (although it doesn't support the rich media things like embedded videos etc, but has good enough solutions for images and LaYeX)

vonklaus 10y ago

After looking this over again, it kind of seems like a blogging platform. I'm going to DL it later, but looks like it could be a sneaky way for them to enter the content publishing space.

sp332 10y ago

"However you think — in words, code, pictures or motion — Paper brings it all together in one place." Can you really communication in "motion" on this site?

divan 10y ago

I'm using Paper for 2+ years now, including for some team projects, and it literally makes me want to write docs and documentation.

rrggrr 10y ago

Between Evernote, Office360 and Google Drive/Docs, etc. I'm of the opinion this was wasted time and money; and that it will not be a revenue or user growth driver for Dropbox. There are gaps in sharing and collaboration where paid demand exists. They include: end-to-end persistent encrypted sharing; File authentication; handwriting recognition/search; rule and ML based box culling; content-aware rules; mesh-network sharing; blockchain integration; content analysis for sourcing/data-viz; and so much more. I sense a lack of imagination at Dropbox.

rrdharan 10y ago
Dropbox's enterprise offering includes OCR with handwriting recognition: https://www.engadget.com/2016/06/22/dropbox-ios-app-scanning-sharing-files/ https://www.engadget.com/2016/06/22/dropbox-ios-app-scanning... I believe it was previously discussed on HN but I can't find the link anymore, anyway they go into detail on the implementation here: https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2016/08/fast-and-accurate-document-detection-for-scanning/ https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2016/08/fast-and-accurate-doc...

obeattie 10y ago

At Monzo where I work, we use Dropbox Paper quite extensively for internal RFC's in the engineering team. We'd probably prefer to use a Google product since the rest of the company uses Drive so heavily, but Docs is simply atrocious when you need to insert some code.

lylo 10y ago
Why don't you use GitHub (or similar) and markdown documents etc for this?
- obeattie 10y ago
  Commenting is painful.

posnet 10y ago

I wonder if they are using operational transforms or CRDTs underneath for the collaborate editing.

rrdharan 10y ago
Operational transforms. https://github.com/ether/pad/tree/master/infrastructure/ace https://github.com/ether/pad/tree/master/infrastructure/ace (I used to work on Dropbox Paper)

mgiannopoulos 10y ago

Feels like a Confluence competitor actually

pducks32 10y ago

I'm sorry but that first video is hilarious. That's the stuff Silicon Valley HBO makes fun of. I'm all for people working together to make the world a better place but I was in tears of laughter at that. I was looking for a (Made by HBO) disclaimer somewhere.

Alex3917 10y ago
The product itself looks great. But paying some marketing firm to dress up Instagram models in outfits designed to evoke the feeling of a greek village seems like a questionable use of money.

bachmeier 10y ago

I've been using the beta for quite a while. I haven't used it extensively, but I will probably use it more once it takes off. Early on in the beta process I requested Mathjax support. They added it, and now all you have to do to insert an equation is type a double dollar sign (ie, $$). That's sort of a killer feature, because most of my communications will involve equations at some point.

eatbitseveryday 10y ago

Very close in name to an existing tool, Papers [1], which is meant for organizing research papers. [1] http://papersapp.com/ http://papersapp.com/

geoffpado 10y ago
Also the (now defunct) Paper by Facebook (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Paper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_Paper), and Paper by FiftyThree (http://www.fiftythree.com http://www.fiftythree.com)

rcymerys 10y ago

I just hope it doesn't end like Mailbox. What I love about Paper (compared to Google Docs and similar tools) is it's simplicity. Formatting options are extremely limited, so all you have to do is just to type and it'll lay the document out for you. This is actually the best feature, since you don't waste time adjusting tab stops and figuring out how to make bullet lists work (which was like 50% of my time when writing documents in regular editors).

joshpadnick 10y ago

Very thoughtfully designed. I liked it better than Quip. But all our docs are in Google Docs, which sometimes includes spreadsheets, which doesn't appear supported. The very nice UX around collaboration isn't enough to justify the migration pain of moving hundreds of Google Docs and losing some of our gdoc non-text docs.

desireco42 10y ago
Nothing is better then Quip! :)

overcast 10y ago

This reminds me of OneNote on the web. With fancier animations, and less functionality.

Grue3 10y ago

I'm impressed how the landing page is completely localized in Russian. Even the screenshots. You can switch the language in the selector at the bottom with like 20 different languages. Pretty cool for a small(?) company like Dropbox.

trumbitta2 10y ago

I hate it when a website takes over my preferences and sets the language to Italian solely based on my IP. Hate. It.

exodust 10y ago
On the subject of annoyances with this page, I hate that everything is spaced out so much. So little information spread over a huge scrolling area. I thought this fad was dying out, but apparently not. So unnecessary and looks awful on a large monitor.

sagivo 10y ago

dropbox evolution: sync files - Google Drive sync photos - Google Photos sync docs that are like websites and also track progress and chat and tons of other features you don't really need but will be shut down in a year!

poorman 10y ago

So like a Basecamp clone?

sambe 10y ago

I haven't tried it, but I get that familiar feeling: you are stepping outside of your core business in a way that will be easily shut down if not making targets. See Carousel in Dropbox's case (nice product, very few complaints, presumably little to zero profit) but companies tend to treat these as moonshots instead of new businesses - it has to be a roaring success to last.

morkro 10y ago

For anyone interested, I've build a desktop client for Dropbox Paper: https://github.com/morkro/papyrus https://github.com/morkro/papyrus

debt 10y ago

Man wtf Dropbox. There are literally thousands of smaller updates and increments you can be making to the product. This type of stuff doesn't have a market! Fire your design team and start over. It will keep not working!

atmosx 10y ago

Apparently at this year and age, communicating what a product does, is a real challenge.

philfreo 10y ago

I love Dropbox Paper. The way I explain it is: It's like Google Docs if it was designed today instead of a decade ago. My team uses it instead of Google Docs for Feature Specs, Meeting Notes, etc.

jest3r1 10y ago

It's an operating theatre though. These and other features may require our systems to access, store and scan Your Stuff. You give us permission to do those things, and this permission extends to our affiliates and trusted third parties we work with. So, in order to work on collaborative documents, I give Dropbox, Dropbox affiliates and trusted third parties access? Who are these people? Others working for Dropbox. Dropbox uses certain trusted third parties (for example providers of customer support and IT services) to help us provide, improve, protect and promote our Services. These third parties will access your information only to perform tasks on our behalf ... https://www.dropbox.com/terms https://www.dropbox.com/terms Maybe not so great for business data privacy compliance then? I know it's not just Dropbox, but the idea that I'm creating business content in some pseudo-document format that an unspecified number of people, including outsourced IT, have access to is unsettling. It's a gold mine for Dropbox of course. They control the document format, making it really easy to data mine. They know exactly what everyone is working on. Your team spends hours planning bigger, brighter ideas, and someone is watching. And they hold us hostage forever. Export is .docx only and the export formatting is atrocious, non usable. What ever happened to encryption for cloud-based services? We're giving all our data away. -- Now, with all that said, Dropbox Paper does solve a number of problems businesses face. The bare bones editor, overall simplicity, and elimination of the traditional file format makes it really easy to use, especially when collaborating with folks that may not create documents every day. Paper docs are giving Basecamp, non-developer Confluence Pages (JIRA) and web hosting at our office a run for the money. Because it doesn't feel bloated. Plus, there's too many options for these types of business productivity tools at the moment. Simpler is better in this regard, as navigating all of the options, and training people, is a project nobody really wants to commit to. At least not at our office. That makes Dropbox Paper a good fit for something.

rrdharan 10y ago
> Export is .docx only and the export formatting is atrocious, non usable. You can also export as MarkDown.

rpearl 10y ago

This has been around for a while? I'm not sure why this is surfacing on HN now. Here's an article from 2015: https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/15/dropbox-announces-paper-a-google-docs-competitor/#.6qjorz:OU6K https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/15/dropbox-announces-paper-a-...

cjmcqueen 10y ago

It's Google Wave.

andy_ppp 10y ago

I have almost this idea too with some interesting twists; it's probably going to be hard to complete with Dropbox though as a one man team. At least this is only a component of what I plan to build and probably the least important bit...

samstave 10y ago

Regarding some of the sentiments in this thread... I have to agree... How exactly does this help me/large teams? Their customer list, sure, has "cool names" -- but the workflow support this provides seems to focus on 19 year old college grads who were forced to do group projects and have only ever touched a macbook air. "beautiful interface" -- do you know how many pitches (including multiple companies from the decades past) attempted to sell their idea on "clean UI" failed and failed and failed? Look if this works for you - then use it - but a white dude and an asian chick sitting in a clean room with a mac thinking about their "marketing" is pretty boring. So - what does this do? How about show me the problem the two in the landing are working on... --- "Before - we were trying to get the reqs from the PM to the devs based on the input from the marketing research of what our customers were asking for WRT features... the pipeline was clogged and nobody was on the same page... emails, PPTs, MTGs etc - nothing worked... then we brought in this new tool - spent a month and a half selling it to the devs to get them to actually create a fucking account, and 18 months later - we are 3% more effective than we were before!" YAY! Sorry - thats how I see tools like such, "Lets disrupt 40 years of DNA on a particular workflow that our experienced devs have been using by showing them a lot of minimalistic whitespace and hi-res stock photos!" how about turn this into a slack hook and let the devs do their thing and be up-front that this is for marketing and PMs and the devs should never see it. It should create requests of (producer of widget) via whatever method that (producer of widget) is used to.... or... found your freaking startup from day-one on a freaking tool... Finally, it would seem that things like this are relegated to very small teams - and you should be wary of attempting to get other groups in your co to drink your cool UI kool-aid. /cynicism...

whywhywhywhy 10y ago

Just find it utterly surprising anyone is willing to invest time bringing Dropbox products (other than their core storage product) into their workflow considering their track record of killing off even popular products.

smpetrey 10y ago

The iOS app is a complete mess. I can't delete notes, I can't access Archives, I can't rename folders nor delete them. I can't move notes between folders. This leads me to believe the app was rushed but apparently there's a version history I the App Store. I left as much feedback as I could through the app but man, yikes.

wahsd 10y ago

Is is just me or is that "whimsy" of the gutsy images/animations getting old?

antoncohen 10y ago

Dropbox Paper is fantastic. You can write Markdown, or use GUI menus. Inline code and code blocks are great, just like normal Markdown. Great for meetings notes, design docs, anything you want to share and collaborate on. So much nicer to write in than Google Docs. It is designed for digital, not as an MS Word clone. I like writing in Paper so much that I use it to write things I'm not going to share via Paper. I actual copy and paste out of Paper into email or Google Docs when I work for companies that don't use Paper. I'll write things like READMEs in Paper first, before moving them to a .md file. The UX is so well thought out. For example, the link creation is so simple. You copy a URL, like from the URL bar, then highlight the text in Paper that you want to be a link, and Cmd+V. The highlighted text will now be hyperlink to the URL on the clipboard. The mobile app is handy too.

140am 10y ago
I had no idea there is a separate "Dropbox Paper" app

mychael 10y ago

The comments on this thread remind me of Drew's "Throw away your USB Drive" post from 10 years ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863

TuringTest 10y ago

> Sorry, there’s an issue connecting to the network. Once it reconnects, you’ll be able to edit your doc. This kills it for me. What good is a note-taking application if taking the notes depends on having network connectivity, 100℅ of the time? (The message appeared while writing, not even when trying to save). I though the whole point of Dropbox was having a local copy of the document, which was synchronized in the background? Why doesn't Paper work that way?

andygambles 10y ago

So is this essentially OneNote?

sebleon 10y ago

This is cool! On a related note, someone should make Sketch files collaborative in real time =D

elastic_church 10y ago

A tech product called paper, how original of a skeumorph to bygone relevance in a simplistic clear name about what the product actually does!

ematvey 10y ago

Honestly I don't see where all the sci-fi analogies and Wave comparisons are coming from. I've been using Paper in beta for several months now, and it is nothing more then a slick, streamlined version of the Etherpad , which arguably was a slick and streamlined version of Wave. It has all the features I used from GDocs, it is convenient and pleasant to look at. Long-form notes are very pleasant to write there. Note-taking aspect of this is definitely something they should explore more.

dandare 10y ago

Is Condoleezza Rice still working for Dropbox?

bluetidepro 10y ago

Does anyone know if they finally changed it with the official release so that when you make a document it actually stores a markdown file or html file somewhere in your actual dropbox? I absolutely hate how the current beta has it so it's disconnected. I want to be able to write stuff in paper but have access to the originals via sync so I can update them locally in maybe something like Sublime and just have it auto update in Paper itself.

anentropic 10y ago

Dropbox is too expensive

gorkamolero 10y ago

This is Quip, if they had a designer on board