Scrivener and box.com

[roza]

I am about to switch from dropbox to box.com.

Does anyone have experiences with potential problems with scrivener bundles and box.com sync? Do you get the same neat warning when you try to open a document that is already open on another computer with box.com sync as you get with dropbox?

[marcoiac]

I looked into box.com some time ago, in the fall. It turns out I do have 50 Gb of space on it, for free. It's totally unusable. The sync chokes all the time. Unless they had some dramatic fixes in the last few months, it's a disaster. Mind you, I wasn't even syncing Scrivener projects, just regular files. Again, it's possible they got their act together, but when I looked into it in the fall and tried to use it, it was beyond pathetic. I'd love to use those 50 Gb in the cloud, but I do need to have reliable cloud service for that

[roza]

Hi marcoiac,

thanks for sharing! My reason to switch was exactly that: My university just entered into an agreement with them and provides 50 GB of storage for free. But what you're saying sounds horrible. After all the good thing about dropbox is that it simply works.

You I kindly ask you to provide a more specific list of the problems you encountered? I would want to try and see whether I get the same issues....

[roza]

wow, I just saw that box.com seems to ignore all bundles. So scrivener files don't get synced at all. This is pretty bad.

[nom]

I can't comment on Box, but I used SpiderOak and DropBox extensively and have stopped using both of them. I have now switched entirely to Cubby for the following reasons:
- similar (free) storage limits
- it works flawlessly(!) on the Mac. Seriously, not one issue. Ever. I find this remarkable.
- will sync any folder (I can't express what a huge difference this makes in comparison to DropBox)
- is very simple to set up (unlike SpiderOak)
- allows you to sync via both remote ("cloud") and local networks (which Cubby calls "DirectSync"). This means, for example, I can share files with my wife without using up our data limits
- basic online versioning
- allows you to share individual files or folders with as many or few people as you wish.
- can be synced using WebDav which means that any WebDav capable third party app can use it (on my iOS devices this includes Scanner Pro, GoodReader, Notability,iThoughts and Apple's iWork apps).
- and finally, it takes security seriously and allows individual folders to be "locked", requiring a password to be accessed from other devices. This also means that, unlike DropBox, not even Cubby staff can access your data if you choose to lock it.

When preparing my thesis, I had all my Scrivener backups saved to a SpiderOak synced folder. Now, I just mark a folder as a "cubby" and know that within seconds it will be synced to the cloud and accessible on all my devices. Note: I still only sync Scrivener backups.

Note: Given my comments above, it's probably worth noting that I am not employed by Cubby, have no shares in the parent company and do not benefit in any way should you choose to use it. Having said that, I'm happy to send you an invite link if you want to give me some extra data.

[roza]

Hey nom,

thanks for this; it sounds fantastic. Unfortunately, I would need more than 5 GB of space and the main reason for me to switch to box.com would have been the 50 GB of space I get for free there (through all kinds of promotions I have some 20 GB for free on dropbox at the moment). But as it turns out, box.com is highly dysfunctional for mac users --- it can't even sync bundles --- so no scrivener files will ever be synced from what I can tell.

Would be interesting to hear if somebody has a different experience...?

[nom]

If you have any friends or family that are willing to sign up you can increase your Cubby quota quite rapidly (1 gig for each person referred). If you really need 50 gig (Wow! That's an enormous Scrivener file!!) then you can sign up for their pro account, currently on special for $3.99/month, which provides a whopping 100GB.

[marcoiac]

i must say, i am trying cubby and it does look like very nice indeed. never had many problems with dropbox, but had some occasional hiccups, some bad ones too, actually, that i always managed to recover. if cubby is as good as nom says (it does look very smooth across platforms), i may have a cloud service winner here

[marcoiac]

- can be synced using WebDav which means that any WebDav capable third party app can use it (on my iOS devices this includes Scanner Pro, GoodReader, Notability,iThoughts and Apple's iWork apps).

Hi there,

I can't manage to sync GoodReader with Cubby on my iPad. How did you set it up? Thanks

[nom]

- can be synced using WebDav which means that any WebDav capable third party app can use it (on my iOS devices this includes Scanner Pro, GoodReader, Notability,iThoughts and Apple's iWork apps).

Hi there,

I can't manage to sync GoodReader with Cubby on my iPad. How did you set it up? Thanks

It's relatively straightforward: enter https://webdav.cubby.com as the webdav address, and use your Cubby login credentials. That's it!
More detail available on how to use Cubby with Webdav is available here.

I've recently been testing the sync capabilities of the newly released Readdle Documents. Unlike GoodReader, it syncs automatically (when a folder is opened), and it has a much friendlier user interface than GoodReader, but it's annotation features are very limited in comparison.

[marcoiac]

excellent, thanks! it does work!

[pking36330]

Just successfully sync'd over 30Gb of files with Box and it was pretty painless except for the time. I did leave my computer running overnight, but all the files are there no problem. Haven't tried hosting a Scrivener project on Box, but the file sync overall is rock solid and without hiccups.

[xiamenese]

Don't want to enter a sour note or start a system war, but as this is the Mac forum and you are using a Windows machine, it is entirely possible that (a) Box works better for Windows users than for Mac users and that (b) the type of account you have with Box may be at play here.

The only other thing for me to say is that I set up a Box account a year or so ago — another Mac user — when I heard about it, or perhaps when the Great Firewall of China decided that Dropbox was a threat to national security and blocked it. Syncing was not possible and files had to be uploaded through a web-browser; it was such a PITA that I have not used it since.

Maybe there have been updates in the meantime, I don't know. But in the March 2013 edition of MacUser UK, there is a long review of cloud services which makes no mention of Box, even though it does have callouts on two other upstarts. It focuses basically on Dropbox, Sugar Sync, Google Drive and Skydrive in comparison with iCloud. Nor does it make any mention of SpiderOak, which I found great on features, though with a — for a Mac-user — less than optimal and rather unattractive Linux-like interface ... another point against it as an article.

Mark

[chuckmartin]

Just to add a bit of information here, I have used Box.com without any trouble, but have not used it for Scrivener yet. They have updated the software quite a bit, and you no longer need to use the web to upload files. It syncs pretty much like Dropbox from my perspective. It doesn't, as far as I know, permit syncing any folder, though. I use both Box and Dropbox for sharing files primarily, and for that purpose they both work about the same.

[xiamenese]

Just to add a bit of information here, I have used Box.com without any trouble, but have not used it for Scrivener yet. They have updated the software quite a bit, and you no longer need to use the web to upload files. It syncs pretty much like Dropbox from my perspective. It doesn't, as far as I know, permit syncing any folder, though. I use both Box and Dropbox for sharing files primarily, and for that purpose they both work about the same.

Are any of the "files" you are sharing in fact packages, like a .scriv project? On Windows they are seen as regular folders including potentially hundreds of nested folders and files, it's only on a Mac that they appear as a single file-type icon. Some technologies don't work with packages.

Mark