Dropbox updates mobile site with new image gallery view

In order to give its users a more unified experience across devices, popular cloud storage service Dropbox has revamped its mobile site with a new image gallery view. The updated site lets you view your images in a gallery, and looks somewhat similar to changes made earlier this year to the Dropbox app on Android and iOS, as well as the desktop site.

The update to the mobile Dropbox website lets you view your images in a gallery-styled fashion from any mobile device. The new view allows you to scroll through your photos, which are ordered by the date they were uploaded. You can also tap on a photo to view it full-sized and flip through photos. To test it out for yourself, just open www.dropbox.com on your mobile phone’s browser, tap on the Dropbox icon at the top, and then tap the Photos button to view your photos in the Camera Uploads folder in gallery format.

The mobile site now shows your photos in a gallery-like view

Dropbox has been making improvements like these for a long time and this looks like part of its effort to let users have a consistent experience irrespective of the platform they use to access the service. This change to the Dropbox website should make the service accessible to people with Windows Phone devices, as Dropbox still has to release a native app for this platform.

The changes to the Android and iOS Dropbox apps earlier this year let you bring your photos and videos to one place, in addition to letting you have the option of automatically uploading photos to Dropbox using Wi-Fi or through wireless data. The photos are all uploaded at full size and quality and are saved to a private folder on your Dropbox account called Camera Uploads.

The startup has also updated its iOS app with options that let you share your content on Facebook and Twitter. Moreover, the company recently announced Facebook Groups integration which lets you share content from your Dropbox account from right inside Facebook Groups.

Currently, Dropbox only offers its users storage space for their photos - the service does not provide any photo editing or manipulation features, like those provided by Google's Picasa. CEO Drew Houston has been quoted in the media as saying the company hopes that third-party developers will step in and do precisely that. Houston said the new development represented a small but significant step toward cultivating a thriving 'ecosystem' around the Dropbox platform. In the case of photos, for example, the company will encourage independent developers to write programs to touch up photos.

Dropbox's mobile apps, which target huge consumer demand for photo-sharing, were meant to "secure and solidify their position as the best file-sharing service and trying not go beyond that, which I think is a smart move," said James Staten, an analyst at Forrester Research.