Dropbox, which is courting developers to make it easier for consumers to add and use files wherever they want, just overhauled its “Chooser” feature.
Introduced in November of last year, it was designed to make it easy for developers to build in an “attach from Dropbox feature” instead of having to create one from scratch. Adding Dropbox’s Chooser to an app involves a small JavaScript snippet and helps developers avoid an implementation of OAuth, or managing uploads and storage.
With that and Dropbox’s growing reach, the company says it’s adding “tens of thousands” of developers every week and that “hundreds of thousands” of files are being shared using Chooser every week. There are “thousands” of applications in development, said Daniel Levine, who works platform at the YC-backed company.
Today Dropbox is touching up Chooser by adding the ability to select multiple files at once and upload files directly from their computer through Chooser. So if you want to grab 10 photos at a time and upload them directly, this would be the way to do it.
“No file in Dropbox has been created by Dropbox,” Levine said. “We want a way for users to get files everywhere they want to use them.”
Files uploaded through Chooser will get automatically saved in a user’s Dropbox and will automatically be available in third-party web apps. Another small upgrade is the ability to drag-and-drop files.
Dropbox’s platform efforts have resulted in a couple key partnerships. Just weeks ago, Yahoo Mail did a big integration with Dropbox so that users could access Dropbox directly inside their Yahoo inboxes. Last fall, Facebook also said that its users would be able to share files directly to Facebook Groups using Dropbox’s cloud-based storage system.