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

[aRealHumanBartender]

images were perfect on all browsers until yesterday afternoon - what is the fix or is this a dropbox issue?

[RKMaroon]

This is very distressing, as I imagine others know all too well. I don't want to leave Dropbox but I have to have image hosting. Does anybody have a recommendation for an all-purpose storage and sync cloud service that supports image hosting? I need a terabyte or two of storage. I don't mind paying a nominal fee. Alternatively, is there a middle-man tool that can retrieve a Dropbox image and provide the hosting service?

[toyheart]

hi, where do you get this information? could any dropbox staff confirm?

I just put images in my obsidian notes? Dropbox can integrate with notion, why can not be used in obsidian?

[torvat-ITA]

Good morning, I do agree with the statement that dropbox isn't a hosting platform. Then remove this https://help.dropbox.com/it-it/share/force-download page.
Really, if it is not intended to allow and manage rendering and download of contents (as a collaboration tool should do, on my personal point of view) then it is ok. I change platform and will not renew my subscription. i don't think Dropbox will care about it. But inform users that this is not allowed and remove pages that explain how to do this.

Have a nice day 🙂

[mondstaub]

Hi

I use images from Dropbox to display images on websites. For this I use the public link such as:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/5x1t2ddk9wlhxz5naoscg/2204-01.jpeg?rlkey=m8zkxxnzge6s05rqo696m0jq8&ra...

(ending dl=0 replaced by raw=1).

 
This no longer works. No image is displayed on the website. 

If I add the address:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/5x1t2ddk9wlhxz5naoscg/2204-01.jpeg?rlkey=m8zkxxnzge6s05rqo696m0jq8&ra...

directly into the browser, the adress is redirected to 

https://ucd8a1098089b4c4a8845e8a7d2b.dl.dropboxusercontent.com/cd/0/inline/CSR-j0SA5XN8_K8Lvb8wcnZjU...

Why that? I think that the redirect is the reason why the image can no longer be displayed on the website where the image is integrated.

Any idea to solve this issue?

[iggy097]

Just an FYI this only is affecting files later than June of 2023. All of my prior files will still load with raw=1

[aRealHumanBartender]

Yeah I just used a different service for my images - I cannot have something this unreliable.

[mdaoud]

I do think that Dropbox is a very greedy company. If they don't want to allow users to render content from the browser (by the way, they mentioned only HTML content), then why did they put it on their support pages?

The most important about cloud services is the reliability, how would trust a company is lead by kids to save a backup of your important files, where is their policy.

[Здравко]

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@mondstaub wrote:

...

If I add the address:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/5x1t2ddk9wlhxz5naoscg/2204-01.jpeg?rlkey=m8zkxxnzge6s05rqo696m0jq8&ra...

directly into the browser, the adress is redirected to 
https://ucd8a1098089b4c4a8845e8a7d2b.dl.dropboxusercontent.com/cd/0/inline/CSR-j0SA5XN8_K8Lvb8wcnZjU...

Why that? I think that the redirect is the reason why the image can no longer be displayed on the website where the image is integrated.
...

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Hi @mondstaub,

Actually No. Dropbox links have been always redirecting. You probably haven't noticed but any other than preview link has redirected all the time. So described by you is not something new and byself cannot be the reason for observed issue. Despite there is something new and it's about how this redirection happens! While till some time ago it was protocol redirect (HTTP location redirect), recently Dropbox started using page redirect (HTML page redirect itself to another place). This is something problematic in most use cases since while an image is expected text file is received, for instance. Since this is NOT something normal, that confuses most applications (including media players, browsers, etc.). Only few are able to handle HTML redirect. Of course when loaded in the main frame of a browser (not as an image inside page or something else) all web browsers handle such redirection correctly (on such a place would be strange to be something other than HTML, so HTML redirect is possible too). That's why those links work in browsers as a page, but do not it while embedded in any way. That's what the nature of this issue is. Combined with forbidding, forced by Dropbox, of such "pages" to load as inline frame, for instance, makes this issue even more hard. There are still some workarounds (not all link types are changed yet). 😉

Hope this clarifies matter.

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@iggy097  wrote:

Just an FYI this only is affecting files later than June of 2023. All of my prior files will still load with raw=1

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Hi @iggy097,

Yes and No. There is nothing related to "ages" of your files, but to their links creation time. Old links (created before last "move") would continue work, but all new links (it doesn't matter to old or new files) will follow discussed new behavior (I hope still, it's some mistake that will be fixed). 🤷 That's it. In other words, this change is not retroactive for links.

Good luck to all of us.

[Warden]

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@torvat-ITA wrote:

I do agree with the statement that dropbox isn't a hosting platform. 🙂

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I don't agree with that statement. There is no difference between sharing something stored in Dropbox and serving something stored in Dropbox. Arguably, serving as raw=1 takes less processing.

The help page does say that "adding raw=1 to a URL will cause an HTTP redirect", and that could cause problems; but what it appears to be doing at the moment is not simply a 302 redirect (it does do that as well) but actually serving text/html content first. Where a recipient is expecting content-type: image/jpeg or content-type: application/pdf, serving content-type: text/html will cause problems. It's that behaviour which has changed.

[rifqyyusuf]

why the images I upload to Dropbox and display on my website suddenly crash, but when I check on Dropbox, the image files are still there. However, when I try to display them using 'raw=1' in the image URL, it crashes on my website.