Force render issues (raw=1) and shared links won't work for hosting.

Happened to me a week ago in some browsers but not others.  The redirect is the root cause. 

To fix, change the www at the start of the link to dl.

For example: www.dropbox…. becomes dl.dropbox…

Hmm...this is unfortunate, if true.

I've been a long-time subscriber to Dropbox for many reasons, and this was one important one. I don't really want to shop around for another cloud storage service yet but I may have to consider doing so if this is the case.

Can anyone from Dropbox please verify or explain the reason the shared image links suddenly broke without warning yesterday? Thanks!

Yes there is a problem again for safari and google.  [img] raw=1 [/img] no longer auto renders pics any more.  We had no issue for months and now customers and forums wont auto render pics via Dropbox files????     We need to get this again worked out. 

Suddenly it doesn't work again.. What's going on Dropbox??

The new url doesnt work but the old way is working(i have to xml files, one with old sharing format and the other one that has the new sharing format..

old: https://www.dropbox.com/s/random_string/test.xml?raw=1

new: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/RANDOM_STRING/FILENAME.xml?rlkey=RANDOM_STRING_for_rlkey&raw=1

and i cannot create the old url format on the main xml(filename.xml) because its only giving me the new sharing format, or is it a way to create the "old"  way?

Tested both url:s in chrome and edge got this result:

old: https://www.dropbox.com/s/random_string/test.xml?raw=1

will redirct to a longer url

https://uc9d29123.dl.dropboxusercontent.com/cd/0/inline/random_string/file#

Test with new sharing url gives the same result, it redirects but in the new redirected page its without the hastag after the text "file"..so something like this:

https://uc9d29123.dl.dropboxusercontent.com/cd/0/inline/random_string/file

Im not sure if that`s the case but thats the only difference that i can notice..

Just to see if the content in filename.xml is OK i copied all the content from main xml into into the old shared format test.xml, this one https://www.dropbox.com/s/random_string/test.xml?raw=1

it works fine from here, therefor nothing wrong in the content in the filename.xml.

Also tried to create a new one xml, gives me of course the new format, same error. New shared format doesnt work..

tahjdbx lisadbx Hannah could you please fix this?

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Greenlaw wrote:

No fix yet. All my shared images are still broken today.

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It seems to be an intentional change on shared links - based upon the fact that the links themselves work when not on a web page. I would not expect Dropbox to change this - they didnt last time. 

You would be better off looking at moving to, and using, a proper webhost.

There seems to have been a change to how links are created/shown over the past few days, yes. 

No fix yet. All my shared images are still broken today.

Hi....

A very strange behaviour....

When i made a weblink of an image in dropbox (right- click,add image in new tab) it's a different link than a collegue did.

Have a look at the attachment...

It's the same map,image....

Is this somewhere a setting in Dropbox that changes creating a weblink?

Dropbox isnt a hosting site, it shouldnt be used as one for reasons exactly like this. Due to the number of posts on this today I suspect that there has been a decision to change how links work/render which has caused them to fail. This is not the first time they've done this, and it wont be the last. Similar posts are here (videos) and here (images)

Your best bet is to use a proper hosting site which is designed and intended to host.

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aRealHumanBartender wrote:
so irritating and I’m simply going to have to use another host bc this is unacceptable

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That is exactly the issue - Dropbox isnt, and never ever has been, a web hosting tool. 

They have (on quite a few occasions now) done things which have stopped things rendering on websites and response has always been the same - Dropbox isnt a hosting platform, its a tool to collaborate and share