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Not every­one has access to file servers or the abil­ity to main­tain one. This can be a huge chal­lenge if you need to share files with co-workers or cus­tomers on a reg­u­lar basis and can’t nec­es­sar­ily send them via email. Drop­box pro­vides an easy, reli­able and cheap (if not free) solu­tion to your worries.

So, why do I need this again?

Two sce­nar­ios: You are a free­lancer or small busi­ness and col­lab­o­rate with oth­ers on a project. You need to exchange files con­stantly, for exam­ple a PSD or Pow­er­point doc­u­ment. Or you need to get a client’s feed­back on a design.

Often times, you can’t send files via email because they are sim­ply too large. Lay­ered PSD’s can mount up to sev­eral hun­dred MB’s and even a Pow­er­point doc­u­ment with a mere 7MB’s or so will be rejected by many email clients. On aver­age, the sup­ported file size is around 3–4 MB’s.

You could, of course, set up a folder on your own server or domain (if you have one) and just store the doc­u­ments there and send your clients or part­ners a link. But what hap­pens if your part­ners or clients want to make changes to the doc­u­ment and share the revised ver­sion with you? Then you need to pro­vide them with upload and/or change priv­i­leges. Even if you know how to do that (and it’s not that dif­fi­cult), it can get tire­some very quickly if you’re not doing it with just one or two people.

So, bot­tom line: if you need to share large files on a reg­u­lar basis, need feed­back on it from oth­ers and need to see their revised ver­sion and don’t want to go through the has­sle of man­ag­ing all the files on your own server, Drop­box might be just what you need. It works on Mac, Win­dows and Linux, so chances are you can give it at least a try.

Keep in mind: Files uploaded via the desk­top appli­ca­tion are only lim­ited in size by the size of your account. Files uploaded via the web inter­face have a limit of 300 MB.

Set­ting it up

First, go to www.dropbox.com and down­load the installer. No, don’t worry: it’s not a desk­top app, it’s just an installer that will allow you to man­age your online files on your com­puter with­out hav­ing to go through the web login every time.

After the instal­la­tion, your online stor­age of Drop­box will be avail­able like a hard drive on your local machine. By default, 2GB of stor­age are free. By invit­ing friends or col­leagues to Drop­box (via a cus­tomized link with your ID), you can earn another 1GB of stor­age for free. That should be enough for starters.

Also, your files are not solely avail­able online, they are also stored on your com­puter. Should you not have access to the inter­net at some point, you will still be able to access your data. The next time you con­nect to the web, the files will be updates automatically.

Com­put­ers that were offline (dis­con­nected or pow­ered off) when files were changed on another com­puter will auto­mat­i­cally receive the most recent changes to files (and send any of their own updates) as soon as they recon­nect to the Drop­box ser­vice via the Inter­net. 

You also don’t have to worry about shut­ting down Drop­box while a sync in progress — it’ll sim­ply resume where it left off once your com­puter is back online.

- https://www.dropbox.com/help/10

There’s an app for that!

Best of all, even when you’re on the road with­out access to a com­puter, you can still access your files through the cor­re­spond­ing iPhone app! You can’t edit any­thing, but it dis­plays PDF’s, HTML, image files and even Pow­er­point files with­out any trou­ble! Haven’t tested it with other MS Office or Apple iWorks files, but I guess it will be ok with them too.

Link to US iTunes Store

The inter­est­ing part: sharing!

Let’s get to the bot­tom of it now that you’ve set every­thing up. Either log into your web based Drop­box account or open your Drop­box default folder on your computer. Set up a file struc­ture that suits your needs.

But be aware — and that is the most impor­tant thing to keep in mind when you get started -: there is a ‘hier­ar­chy’ of shar­ing priv­i­leges that you need to take into con­sid­er­a­tion before you give any­body access to your files!

What does that mean? Look at this structure:

The Exam­ple Folder has three sub­fold­ers — Apple Doc­u­ments, Image Files, and PDF Doc­u­ments. Say that you want your cus­tomer or part­ner only to see the Image Files folder. In your web based account, sim­ply mark the check­box in front of the folder and select “Share Folder” from the “More Actions” menu. You’ll be prompted to enter an email address of the per­son you want to grant access and you can add an optional mes­sage. The per­son will then get an invite and after reg­is­ter­ing with Drop­box, has full access to the con­tents of the folder.

But, what hap­pens if you later on decide that this per­son should have access to all sub­fold­ers of Exam­ple Folder? Unfor­tu­nately, and that is, in my opin­ion, a short­com­ing of Drop­box, you can not share fold­ers which include an already shared folder! You will be prompted with an error mes­sage say­ing exactly that.

Either you have to share all other fold­ers man­u­ally or you have to remove the shar­ing priv­i­leges from the Image Files folder first and then set the priv­i­leges for the par­ent folder (Exam­ple). Then, of course, the per­son you invite has access to all files that are con­tained within the par­ent folder.

As long as you are aware of the pecu­liar­ity before you set up your file and folder struc­ture, you shouldn’t run into too much trouble.

Work­ing with files

Now that you have uploaded your files and shared them, Drop­box shows it’s real power. Not only can users, which you have invited, upload files to their fold­ers, but you can also work on the same file simultaneously!

If two peo­ple or com­put­ers change the same file at the same time, the first per­son to fin­ish upload­ing their new ver­sion will “win.”

Drop­box won’t attempt to merge the changes for you. There­fore, any changes made to the same file after it has been updated will also have their changes synced to all com­put­ers, but as a “con­flicted copy” of the file.

Fore more infor­ma­tion on this spe­cific topic, check out this help doc­u­ment.

What if you want to grant a large num­ber of peo­ple access to a spe­cific file, for exam­ple a wall­pa­per that you made and offer for down­load? It’s very sim­ple: just put the file into your Pub­lic Folder on Drop­box and get the link to it via the “More Actions” menu. You can then put that link on your web­site, send it via email or tweet it — every­body can access it. (more infor­ma­tion on that topic can be found here).

Other awe­some things you can do via Dropbox

Share your 1Password key­chain across com­put­ers Yes, I am seri­ous. Imag­ine you have a sta­tion­ary com­puter and a lap­top. Of course, you’d need to keep both key­chains in sync. The eas­i­est way to do it is to put your 1Password key­chain on your Drop­box account and direct the appli­ca­tion there. I’ve writ­ten about it in detail ear­lier on this blog, you can check out the arti­cle here.

Sync The Hit List across com­put­ers Same prin­ci­ple as above. Put your ‘thlli­brary’ file on Drop­box and direct The Hit List there. This way, your tasks are always in sync across mul­ti­ple computers.

Empower Typ­ina­tor Start­ing with ver­sion 3.6, Typ­ina­tor sup­ports sync­ing via Drop­box natively. If you have not upgraded to the lat­est ver­sion yet, just do it man­u­ally. Export your sets from Typ­ina­tor (file end­ing .tyset),put them in a folder on Drop­box and import them on another machine. Granted, it’s more painstak­ing, but until I upgrade, it will have to suffice.

Why not use MobileMe for this?

Granted, it would make sense since a MobileMe account comes with a whop­ping 20GB of stor­age. But it also costs you some pretty hefty $$! Drop­box, on the other hand, is free.

In addi­tion, I found that the up– and down­load speed from the MobileMe iDisk is ter­ri­bly slow. And while I love Apple and their prod­ucts, there is no deny­ing that from time to time, MobileMe sim­ply doesn’t work or is com­pletely down. If you need to access your files then, you are — par­don the strong lan­guage — screwed.