Got email notice from dropbox that they are discontinuing HTML rendering. This is going to cause major issues for my wife since she uses this to distribute info and files to her students. We are running a basic account and would be willing to upgrade to a paid account to retain this feature, but this policy seems to be across all account levels. Any advice on alternatives?

Richard P.: Your response indicates that Dropbox is able to determine who is using this feature for malware and who is not. If that is true, why not issue a warning to bad actors and then disable it for those that don't comply and let legitimate users continue to use this feature? You're changing an important feature that has been very helpful to many legitimate users.

The notice I got says that this change will be effective a year from now: "Please note that this change will take effect for your account on September 1, 2017". By the way, what is the reason for this change? Security concerns?

I am a basic user so it is one month notice. While moving to a dedicated web host is an option, it is not as easily to implement for a novice user as Dropbox is/was. While I understand there could be abuses, making this part of a paid tier makes more sense to me than just discontinuing it. I am sure I am not the only one who took advantage of this feature. I rather pay for Dropbox (upgraded service) and retain the simple benefits of publishing to a shared folder than paying for a web host that requires either ftp or web based file uploads.

why not issue a warning to bad actors and then disable it for those that don't comply and let legitimate users continue to use this feature Because people can set up infinite accounts in seconds - quicker than they can be removed.

By this do you mean that they can set up infinite Dropbox free accounts? If so, why not keep this feature for paid Dropbox accounts?

Discontinuing rendering of HTML content

Shannon M.12
New member | Level 1
9 years ago
I'll be considering moving to another service (of which there are many) if Dropbox go through with this. I use this feature regularly for sharing prototypes for remote usability testing. I would expect Dropbox to come up with a better way to resolve the issue than to cut this valuable feature off. Very annoying!
krdomains
New member | Level 2
8 years ago
yeah, i actually signed up for dropbox just for this function and found out they're discontinuing it. bad move dropbox!!
Mark
Super User II
9 years ago
Nobody here can answer that I'm afraid Rich - we are all users like you
Dave C.21
New member | Level 1
9 years ago
Sadly, updog is not working for me...not sure why...

My original site...https://dl.dropbox.com/u/2758377/lummux/index.html

Copied to updog...https://lummux.updog.co/
Anoop G.
New member | Level 1
9 years ago
^ Novice here but perhaps updog doesn't like something in your html file?

When I run it through the html validator, I get a bunch of errors:

https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=http%3A%2F%2Flummux.updog.co%2F
Dave C.21
New member | Level 1
9 years ago
Maybe, I'm a novice too. But it works in normal dropbox public folder, this is just a copy of all the files...point is, it looks like it's not as simple as you hoped.
Anoop G.
New member | Level 1
9 years ago
True. I think fixing the very first error will help.

Try putting this at the very top of every html file. You could just try with the index.html first.

<!DOCTYPE html>
Richard P.
Super User alumni
9 years ago
The sub pages loaded into your frames (which you really really should not use by the way) are not being served with a valid content type, so the browser is interpreting them as text files.

index.html:

list.htm:

Try renaming your .htm files to .html (remembering to update the index.html frames definition).
Jim I.3
New member | Level 1
9 years ago
So far, updog is working for me, simply copying files and folders from my dropbox Public folder into my updog folder. My web pages are all very simple, just text and images and links.
Anoop G.
New member | Level 1
9 years ago
^ same here.