Dropbox will soon be adding support on both Windows and OS X for placeholder files that create a full view of your cloud-synced files, even if they're not available locally.
OneDrive (or rather SkyDrive, as it was called then) in Windows 8.1 was a significant step forward in improving the cloud storage experience for desktop users thanks to its novel handling of cloud-synced files. Within Explorer and at the command prompt, every file stored on OneDrive was shown, even if it wasn't synced locally. Double-clicking a file (or using File... Open within an application) would automatically download it so that it could be read and edited as normal.
This system provided a great increase in usability, especially on machines with limited local storage. Instead of requiring you to pick and choose which files or folders to sync manually in order to avoid filling the local disk, you could see all your files and folders in your OneDrive folder. Only the ones that you actually opened locally would occupy their full size; everything else was shrunk to a few bytes of metadata.
But Microsoft removed that capability in Windows 10. OneDrive now works the way Dropbox works; you can choose to either sync all your files (occupying as much space locally as the files require), or you can selectively sync individual files and folders and use the Web interface to access everything not synced. It was a huge step backward in usability and convenience.
Things have now turned full circle. Called "Project Infinite," Dropbox's clients for Windows 7 and up and OS X 10.9 and up will soon offer a similar capability to Dropbox users.
The Dropbox experience on the client will be familiar. Files available locally will continue to show a green check mark overlay on their icons. Project Infinite will add a second overlay: a cloud icon that indicates files that are available online but not yet local. Opening one of these cloud files will download it and treat it normally. As with Microsoft's system, a limited amount of information about cloud files will be visible without any download—the true size and modification date will be displayed normally—but without any significant local storage overhead.
Microsoft ditched its system because it said that it was confusing—it wasn't clear which files were available locally and which were not—and because it had some compatibility issues. Programs running at the command prompt, for example, could not open unsynced files. Neither of these problems seemed intractable—the icon overlay that Dropbox is providing feels like it should address the first issue well enough, and we're told that Dropbox has solved the second issue, too.
Project Infinite is currently being tested by Dropbox in a private beta, and the company has not said precisely when it will roll the capability out more broadly.
The Dropbox client has long been more convenient and capable than the OneDrive software, making it the superior choice. But the Windows 8.1 client for OneDrive looked as if it had finally given Microsoft's cloud storage system the edge. The convenience, especially on tablets and low-end PCs with only limited local storage, made up for any other deficits that OneDrive might have had. Since then, however, OneDrive has become steadily worse, reverting to the older style of selective synchronization and greatly reducing the amount of storage available with new accounts now eligible for only 5GB. With Dropbox now getting OneDrive's best feature, the reasons to pick Microsoft's cloud storage system seem few and far between.
Listing image by Project Infinite
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