Dropbox has finally released version 1.0. The new version comes with hundreds of bug fixes, including invalid file names on Windows, weird Unicode normalizations, Word and Excel file locking, abnormal symlinks hierarchies, and case sensitive file systems on Mac. It also adds TrueCrypt support, a Rainbow Shell that offers support for extended attributes, selective sync, a new installation wizard, and reduces resource usage.
Here is a more complete rundown of the new features:
- Huge performance enhancements: the client-side sync engine has been re-architected to optimize the response time, scale, and resource consumption. As a result, memory usage has been reduced by up to 50 percent. Big changes made to Dropbox are now more efficient and smaller changes remain quick.
- Better user experience: the initial setup wizard has been redesigned to make it easier to get started using Dropbox. The Mac OS X version has been rewritten to only use Cocoa, bringing down the Mac download size by 20 percent.
- Selective Sync: you now can choose which folders get downloaded to which computers, so you don't have to sync stuff you don't need.
- Extended Attribute Sync: resource forks and other extended attributes are now supported. Resource forks are an area of a file that certain applications use to store important data, and that most sync programs today completely ignore, which results in a corrupted file on the other end.
"1.0 is a milestone for us, and with it we want to communicate our confidence that Dropbox is stable, high-quality software," a Dropbox spokesperson said in a statement. "The service has grown from a simple sync app to something that's changed the way lots of people work and communicate. But just because this version of Dropbox has a new number doesn't mean that we're anywhere close to finished. We have a long way to go before we realize our goal of making it easy for everyone to always have access to their stuff."
You can download Dropbox 1.0 directly for Windows, Mac, and Linux.