Review my app, Crate.

by sahillavingia • 16 years ago

29 38 16 years ago

I feel like we've reached a 1.0 (beyond a MVP because it has features that aren't necessary but greatly improve the UX, oh buzzwords!).

Crate = drag-and-drop + slick interface + easy sharing system of crates or single files.

We're still hard at work on it (you can tell that the marketing site is quite lacking...) but I'd love all your feedback. Thanks!

wccrawford• 16 years ago

Interface looks nice. It seems easy to use. Lack of anything other than a signup form is... Off-putting. Made me wonder if you're just harvesting my email address.

As for the 'sharing' bit... I just give out the url of the file? Can't give out the url for the crate? Can't lock it down in any way, shape or form? If someone guesses my url, they can download my stuff?

sahillavingia13• 16 years ago

If you hover over the crate name you can copy the URL of that too. We've made the URLs pretty hard to guess but will add further protection later (and welcome tooltips to make sure people know about stuff like this).

procyon• 16 years ago

It took me couple of minutes to figure out how to copy the link to the URL. You can copy the url automatically to clipboard right after user uploads the files (and display the notice to communicate it) or provide a visual clue to make it easier to find URL copy feature.

malvim• 16 years ago

I agree with the "lack of anything other than a signup for is off-putting".

Sorry, but I won't sign up for something that I don't know what is. This is probably obvious, I know, and that's exactly why I'm stating it here again.

sahillavingia13• 16 years ago

We've been busy with features so we haven't had a chance to work with the marketing site. But we understand that and that's totally fine.

mikelbring• 16 years ago

Looks nice, you need to make it so the file is force downloaded. I uploaded an html file and it just viewed it.

sahillavingia13• 16 years ago

Ah good point about .html files, that's been added to the issue tracker.

wilhelm2• 16 years ago

Being able to view files directly in my browser is nice. Forcing a download just so that I can open the same file in the same program is just annoying.

But be careful! If you serve user-uploaded, untrusted files from the same domain as everything else, that's a great way to make yourself vulnerable to XSS.

azrealus• 16 years ago

I love how simple it is :) Nice job guys! The one thing which I would change is jumping to the other window to add my files to the crate I just created. I see the crate I just created added to my list but then the screen suddenly jumps to the other view. Other than that it's very nice!

sahillavingia13• 16 years ago

Yes, it is a bit sudden. We'll work on making this smoother.

trickjarrett2• 16 years ago

Awesome UI, but there is no way in hell I'm giving you any files until you have some legal pages up explaining my rights, your rights, and what you can/will do with my information and files.

sahillavingia13• 16 years ago

Fair enough, we're working on getting some policy pages up ASAP.

trickjarrett2• 16 years ago

Fantastic. But as I said, the site looks great and is extremely simple to use (from what I can see) - my only concern is the TOS :)

leftnode• 16 years ago

I really like your interface. One thing I'm not crazy about with HTML5 is drag and drop uploading. I like that it exists, but please give me the regular type=file input box.

With drag and drop, it means I either have to resize my browser to access something on my desktop or open my filemanager to navigate to the directory where the files are. I'd much rather just click on a Browse... button and go from there.

Otherwise, very nice.

sahillavingia13• 16 years ago

Ah, good point. We'll add in the ability to click the dropzone for the normal file upload method soon!

TheSOB88• 16 years ago

Just having a red box around the bad part of the submission form is not enough. I didn't even notice the box had changed color for like 20 seconds, because the border is so thin. But you need some text too.

sahillavingia13• 16 years ago

Good point! We have this for the login I think, but we'll add this to the register page too.

amitvjtimub• 16 years ago

Drop area need to be full window. At present it is just one rectangle.

I dropped 2 files and figured it out for third file.

Edit: Also it not immediately obvious that clicking on file copies URL pointing to that file.

sahillavingia13• 16 years ago

Yup, that's the biggest usability problem on our list; workin' on it!

timtadh• 16 years ago

I like the idea, however I would really like short sharing urls for all files. My use case for sites like letscrate is for quick file transfer for things like printing from untrusted computers. I also would like a regular file input box like @leftnode, since many of my files are hidden many layers deep from my desktop.

sahillavingia13• 16 years ago

True, the short URLs aren't that short. We're adding in nice "lts.cr/a" URLs soon.

fredleblanc• 16 years ago

I'm doing that no-Flash-plugin-on-my-Mac thing and couldn't get uploading to work (and I also see a box noting a missing plugin). I "let go to upload," but the window just sat there. Switching to Chrome (which has Flash built in), everything worked fine.

As others have said, just having a standard upload button would work nicely. Same with click-to-copy, there doesn't seem to be a way to get the URL without Flash. Detect Flash, and then add in the "goodies" like that, otherwise the interface is much less usable.

Other than that, when Flash is installed, the interface is nice and easy to use. It's a great start and I look forward to more!

sahillavingia13• 16 years ago

Yeah, click-to-copy is Flash only. Definitely looking to implement a fallback though :)

rmc• 16 years ago

I went to your website and I have no idea what it's about. All I see (on the home page) is a "Login" or "Register" button. Your tagline is "Ridiculusly easy filesharing", but I can already share files with people via email or Facebook, why should I use your site? You need to sell me on your site.

sahillavingia13• 16 years ago

This is more of a "review the features of the app" rather than a marketing pitch, but definitely something we have in the works.

snsr• 16 years ago

Drag and drop upload hangs at 0% w/ Safari 4.0.2 and Flash 10,0,32,18.

inovica• 16 years ago

I agree with others - just put a brief bit of info to let people know. OK - it works really well for me. I'd like to be able to rename the files that are uploaded and I'm not sure how I give access to them to others, unless its purely via the URL (what about password access)? I still think you've some way to go, but its good. Some documentation and/or a video would be really useful

How have you created the drag and drop uploading?

sleight42• 16 years ago

I dig it. So how about widgets to embed "drop here to store this in create X" within other apps?

wilhelm2• 16 years ago

Why do I need to register to try it out? I'd be happy to spend a few minutes of my time trying something new, but having to fill in all this information is too much friction. I won't bother.

A button that allows me to create an anonymous test account with one click would be nice. If I like the service, I would like to turn my test account into a proper account, keeping my data. If I don't like it, and abandon my test account, you can delete it automagically after a month. Please do keep me logged in the whole month, though - I might change my mind and come back again.

retube• 16 years ago

Seconded. I think an app like this should allow anonymous users for small files.

randrews• 16 years ago

It doesn't seem to work with folders... I dragged an Xcode project folder on to it and it spun forever at 0% uploaded.

Other than that, it's pretty cool. Very nice interface. You should make a shell extension or something so I can right-click on a file to add it to a crate (and copy the URL to that crate); that would be very handy.

GotToStartup• 16 years ago

I like the simple and clean layout, however, what I really need is a way to send large files (>200meg).

FrankDee• 16 years ago

Have you tried FilesDIRECT? It lets you send files up to 2GB, store up to 30GB (to start!), has tons of features and a 1 month free trial. I believe there's a 50% off sale going on too, but I'm not sure if it's still on...

kevinburke• 16 years ago

I tried signing up and the signup page just reloaded with red lines around it.

Review my app, Crate.

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