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

Dave C.21
New member | Level 1
9 years ago
That got it, thanks! I have some changes to make, but it looks a lot better now.

You'll note that I made this website about fouteen years ago...just keeping it for nostalgia reasons now, band isn't even current anymore

Thanks again!
Anoop G.
New member | Level 1
9 years ago
Dave, Glad you were able to get it to work!
David R.16
New member | Level 1
9 years ago
What's updog?
Bob J.
Helpful | Level 6
9 years ago
I think Pro has a bit longer before html rendering stops, but i am unclear what this stoppage will mean for html-like files?.

I store .kml and .kmz files on DropBox for Google Earth rendering and these call in .jpg images via html statements in the inline html in balloons. i.e.:

<img src="https://dl.dropbox.com/u/xxx/Images/D38.jpg" />

Will these be affected?

BobJ
Bob J.
Helpful | Level 6
9 years ago
I have made the call and have upgraded to Pro.

This gives me protection till September next year and seems a small price to pay for peace of mind.

However i do assume that my clients will be allowed to render the html that i offer them within my account without also upgrading.

can anyone confirm this?

Bob J.
Anoop G.
New member | Level 1
9 years ago
Bob J.,

Have you tried updog.co?

Your clients don't even need a dropbox account to have html rendered by dropbox, so I don't think any of that changes.

Anoop
Girardi M.
New member | Level 2
9 years ago
Hello, I'm a basic user.

Now I'm hosting some .js and .css files (not .html files), that I use from someone of my websites (they are used to provide standard contents for "cookies policy management").

Do this change will affect the "content-type" of the served files, and do it will affect .js and .css files?

Thank you for any answer.

Matteo
Anoop G.
New member | Level 1
9 years ago
Is https://htmldrop.com similar to https://updog.co? any idea how the two are different?

for what it's worth, i find rendering with updog to be noticeably slower than with bitballoon. my guess is because updog has to get the data from dropbox while bitballoon has it available on their servers.

htmldrop looks like it may be sync-ing files, so it might have better performance than updog.
Victor L.19
Explorer | Level 4
9 years ago
@Anoop

https://htmldrop.com will sync your html, txt and css files locally which improves both load times and ease of use.

It will soon do syncing automatically instead of having the user manually sync the changes in his or her Dropbox.
Steve C.58
New member | Level 1
9 years ago
Thank you very much for this info. I used DB for static configuration pages in Pebble watchfaces and thought I was out of luck...or at least out a few bucks every month. Updog was a super easy solution that worked on the first try.