Illustrated Tutorial on Using dropBox Stored Pics on Here

[Legacy_Tarot Redhand]

               

Seems like there are a number of people who are struggling to use dropbox for hosting pictures to show in threads here. It is really quite simple. Just follow this little tutorial to get them seen.

 

The first thing you need to know is that you absolutely must use your public folder. None of the other built-in folders will work. The pictures folder is optimised for sharing sites such as facebook and twitter. Now it has come to my attention that dropbox no longer creates a public folder when you first create your account. Do not panic. There are instructions on there as to how to properly create this folder. I can’t be more specific as to how to create this folder as when I opened my account dropbox automatically created a public folder. To reiterate ->

 

 

In order to keep things tidy (i.e. this is not absolutely necessary) I would suggest that you create a sub-folder in your public folder, to host your pictures.

 

 

Upload your pictures to dropbox. When you are ready to insert the picture into your post, position your cursor into the editor ->

 

 

Now open a new tab in your browser and go to the folder in your dropbox/public folder where your pictures are stored. Position your cursor on the line, which has the details of your picture, in such a way that it is not over any text etc. Left-click to highlight that line.

 

 

In the above illustration I have tweaked the contrast to make the highlit line stand out more. Looking at this illustration you should see a link that says “Copy public link...”. Click this link.

 

 

Which should open a small dialog box. Wait until the link to your picture appears in the space provided for it in the dialog. This may take a second or two. Now you can click the button that says “Copy to clipboard”.

 

Switch back to the tab in your browser with the open editor.

 

 

You need to click the button that I have highlighted with a red circle. This will open a small dialog box ->

 

 

Paste the address into the textbox on this dialog and click “OK”. After a short while your picture will appear at the position your cursor was in the editor.

 

One last thing you may find useful. The editor on these boards will allow you to make the picture you have just uploaded into a link to something else (e.g. another web page or a file for example. To do this, follow these steps.

 

First highlight the picture in the editor. You then need to click ->

 

 

the button I have highlighted. This will open another small dialog box ->

 

 

Paste the address into the box provided and click “OK”. Once you have actually posted your message your picture should now link to something else. As an example I have made this tutorial into a (rough and ready) pdf file for downloading. Just click the last picture...

 

TR

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_CaveGnome]

               

This is a repost from the NwN Spelljammers Group

 

Thanks for the tutorial Tarot. Using it and the following info i was able to make it work :-)

 

At first i tried to make a folder named "Public" without success. After searching the DBx Help i found this:

 

<DBx Help quote>

Answers to some common questions: Please note: New Dropbox accounts created after October 4, 2012 no longer have a Public folder. Don't worry! Every account created prior to this date will still.

And this:

 

Render a file in your browser

Most modern web browsers can automatically detect, open, and otherwise handle many file types. For instance, clicking image links in a browser will typically open the image within the browser rather than download it to your desktop. Browser extensions or plug-ins can also add file type functionality to your browser. To bypass the preview page and allow your browser to handle your files, replace www with dl and dropbox.com with dropboxusercontent.com in your URL. For example:

 

xxxxx://www.dropbox.com/yyyyy/MyFile.jpg

Becomes:

xxxxx://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/yyyyy/MyFile.jpg

 

Force a file or folder to download

Using the new direct link above, you can further modify the URL to force the browser to download the file, rather than handle it natively. To force a file download, append a direct link with ?dl=1. For example:

 

xxxxx://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/yyyyy/MyFile.jpg

(Note that the URL begins with dl.dropboxusercontent.com, as instructed in the section above.)  Becomes:

xxxxx://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/yyyyy/MyFile.jpg?dl=1

Enter the new URL in the address field of your browser and it should automatically download, instead of open, the file.

 

Public folder links

Accounts created before July 31st, 2012 are pre-populated with a Public folder. All the functionality of Public folders (and more) is available from anywhere in your Dropbox by creating a Dropbox link.

The primary difference between Dropbox links and Public links are that unmodified Public links will render in your browser by default rather than open in a preview window on the Dropbox website. If you would rather force the Public link to directly download rather than render in the browser, add ?dl=1 to the end of the URL, as described above.

<end DBx quote>

 

Please, note the "?dl=1" is not necessary to autoload the pic, at least with Firefox.