Box.net Relaunches


I was fortunate enough to get invited by Aaron Levie to test Box.net‘s “Early Adaptor Preview” this past weekend. I couldn’t blurt anything till after the 22nd about it. But yah, I almost forgot as I’ve been busy enjoying my Monday off from work.

Anyways, so far so good. Here’s a couple of my findings from the getgo:

  • Soothing and attractive color palette
  • UI upgraded to be 2.0-friendly
  • Right-click (after logging in) pops up a Box.net menu. A disadvantage I guess, at least for me. Your browser’s right-click menu options won’t work. For example, Screengrab FF extension to take a couple of screenshots. Note: I mentioned this to Aaron, he said that they might give an option to have it enabled/disabled later on.
  • Uploading. At first, I thought the Upload-tab was going to change the actual page (coming from the Browse-section). It actually just pops up a layer onto the viewport with its content. If you are coming from anywhere else other than the Browse-section and clicked on Upload-tab, you are actually redirected to the Browse-section first and need to click on Upload-tab again to do the actual upoad. Note: As Aaron pointed out through email, this is more of a “usability” thing and should be addressed later on.

    Second, I thought the “drag-and-drop” was actually functional so I tested an image file and dragged it to the browser window, only to be greeted by the preview of the image itself. That is, the browser changing its URL to the local files. “Oops.” Didn’t know the “drag-and-drop” text was a link which pops up a window (Java applet) for the actual drag-and-drop.

    Besides the above, I found that relatively easy and intuitive to upload your files. Granted it ain’t there ain’t no Windows file-transfer animation, but its direct to the point—to get your files as fast and as safe as possible from your hard-drive to their server(s).

I’ll post some screenshots later today. It’s so purty believe me. As for now, you may get a glimpse through this Box.net shared-folder, or via Box.net’s blog entry about the relaunch.

Note: Here are some podcast interviews with Aaron Levie: a) by Gear Live, and b) Venturus.