29Aug 2011

v2.10: Brand New Look and 2 GB Per File

This weekend, hurricane Irene passed through NYC with vicious winds and torrential rain. Fortunately, the Minus team all lived through it safely.

The version released today is a significant update that marks the beginning of a new chapter of universal sharing for Minus. Below is a brief summary of the cool things we’ve been working on. We will be making rapid releases in the next few weeks so stay tuned. Let us know what you think of the new Minus – your feedback is critical for us.

New Features

  • Upload even bigger files now up to 2 GB per file!
  • Brand New Look and Feel
    • New Homepage with easier sign up and more info
    • New Dashboard (previously called timeline) for managing Files, Feed and History
    • New Folder design (galleries are now folders)
    • Users now have Profile Picture / Avatar, add via Settings
  • Each account receives 10 GB Free. Options to get more free storage coming soon
  • Added ability to change Username to Settings page
  • Profile URLs are now http://minus.com/user instead of http://minus.com/u/user
  • Added Facebook and Twitter Connect to settings page for existing users

Changelog

  • Few site terminologies have changed
    • Timeline is now Dashboard for homepage
    • Galleries are now Folders for each Minus link
  • Optimized Facebook and Twitter Connect for new users
  • Removed Download as Zip function temporarily for technical reasons
  • Optimized i.minus.com serving file downloads and image hotlinks
  • Optimized file uploader and upload progress bar for Minus
  • For security reasons we have added .bin to replace executable windows files
    • File extensions renamed include  .exe .scr .msi .js .vbs .bat .lnk
  • New guest file uploads auto-import into account after Sign-In
  • Upgraded multiple server backend softwares
  • Fixed general bugs and performance issues

Work in progress

  • Ability to preview Office documents, power points and more inside galleries
  • Browse galleries, and tagging
  • Password protection for galleries
  • Improved UX and overall design
  • Improved Dashboard and File Management

Posted on Monday August 29 2011 in General, Updates by Carl Hu 32 Comments

32 Comments

  1. This is awesome! Very well done! 2go is a good news for screenpresso users that share screencasts!

  2. Thanks and glad to hear.

    Please do integrate user minus authentication for Screenspresso, so they get 10 GB of free space ! :)

    Cheers

  3. Awesome as always.
    Only thing I miss in everyday work is possibility to nest folders or at least group few galleries into collection.

    John Xie

    Thanks and yes nesting folders is something we might do, but it is simply too confusing for many users, and we must think how many layers of nesting etc…

    Definitely on our list of things to think about.

  4. przemoc

    Thank you for another improvent. FAQ (http://minus.com/pages/help) lost information about file size limit for guests, though. You really shouldn’t remove such information, because it just looks bad. I suppose it is still 100 MB, but why it became suddenly a secret, I don’t comprehend… (Also CSS is wrong there – bullets are outside of text.)

    John Xie

    Thanks ! We’re updating the FAQ/Help page right now to reflect CSS corrections. As for the Guest upload limit. That is no longer there, it is 2-GB for guests as well, but files will be expiring. We’ll add the news soon :)

    przemoc

    I didn’t see it coming! 2GB for guests, even if expiration is there, sounds truly amazing. Any details about expiration rules, time-to-death renewing policy, etc.? Will expiration cover only big files (like >100MB) or all stuff uploaded by guests?

    John Xie

    Thanks and glad to hear you like the idea.

    We’ll have full details soon but the plan is Guest Uploads of up to 2 GB will have 30-day limit expiration. Registered users have no limit and there will be additional free ways to get more storage.

    Stay tuned !!

    Matt Smith

    Why would anyone sign up if they can just become a guest and have as much space as they want when users are limited to 10gb? I believe their should be a way to limit guests to like 4gb or something to encourage them to register.

    John Xie

    The guest file uploads will expire, and guest users do not have any file management and additional features/functions.

  5. wmq

    You should also look at switching between files in folders (galleries). Using mouse wheel should switch between them, not to scroll webpage. This also applies to embedded galleries.

    Dark mode:
    Tabs under image (Share, Comments, Embed) and lines that separate parts of webpage look awful.
    Selected tab should be gray, not black and be brighter than not-selected tabs.
    Other lines should be darken that it is now.
    Line under not-selected tabs is too thick – is should be the same width as
    Top bar also should be darkened.
    See highlighted parts here: http://minus.com/lbei7e2JG5It1D

    Do you plan to have other language versions of Minus (other than English)? I would be glad to translate it to Polish.

    John Xie

    Hi Wmq,

    Thanks for the detailed comment.

    1) We had mouse scroll feature for scrolling between files in folders, but we disabled it as it was slowing down many browsers/users

    2) Dark mode will be optimized more, very sorry.

    3) We’ll look into the selected tab

    Really appreciate it ! That was helpful. We’ll be polishing the design more over next month. As for language, we’ll definitely be interested in translating in the near future. Feel free to email john@minus.com with subject translate :) We’ll stay in touch!

    Cheers

  6. DeoDomuique

    Jesus… It’s incredible!

    John Xie

    Glad you like it !

  7. DRoss

    I like it. Has a “buysellads” feel to it but that’s a good thing. Nice job.

    John Xie

    Thanks! We’ll keep doing our best :)

  8. Deo Domuique

    I’ll repeat: It’s incredible! But, addiotionally, I’d like to say: Please, now focus on even more resposiveness speed! On some functions, like “delete image” it lags…

    John Xie

    Thanks Deo. We’re getting hammered with growth right now and scaling as fast as we can. Will definitely focus on optimizations.

    Cheers

  9. Steve

    Just seen your service and it looks amazing!

    Do you offer a premium service for more space?

    John Xie

    Thanks Steve! We don’t have premium service right now but you can simply invite your friends to sign-up and get more free space! http://minus.com/pages/invite

  10. Jeremy

    This is great. If you offer a premium product at a reasonable price, I would buy it to support the product.

    John Xie

    Thank you Jeremy, really appreciate it! We’ll continue to do our best and stay tuned / subscribed for the news :)

  11. Ezhik

    I am new here, and this service is just amazing!

    Have a question – are you planning to bring in a possibility to see a photo preview in twitter? For example as twitpic and yfrog works – I use Tweetdeck (Crome and Android) and see pictures in timeline. With other services users have to click on url to see the photo =(

    P.S. In nearest future will send you an email – can help to translate min.us to Russian.

    John Xie

    Hi Ezhik

    Glad to hear and welcome to Minus!

    We would love to make it work with Twitter, maybe you can contact them to integrate Minus :)

    We will also look into translating to Russian, stay tuned and please help us spread the word!

    Cheers

  12. was using dropbox before … have changed to minus since a few weeks ago …
    so far so good … :) I like the interface a lot …
    I eve blogged about it …
    Wish you guys all the best … :)
    http://www.subcorpus.net/2011/09/minus-impressive-file-storage-service.html

    John Xie

    Appreciate it!! :)

  13. Rock

    What about the files that were uploaded as guest before the change?Do they expire or this applies only to files that are uploaded now?

    John Xie

    They do not expire. Expiration only applies to new files here on.

  14. For some reason the files I have hosted on minus in .exe format are being downloaded as .bin any ideas why?

    John Xie

    We rename the extension of .exe to .bin to prevent some abuse and security issues, such as loading a Virus for users to download via Minus :\

  15. where is the download count? I am releasing all of my projects via min.us as it is an amazing service! I’m looking to track data, to be honest. I’d even pay for some PRO upgrade option…like perhaps 30 a year and 15 for students with .edu emails?

    John Xie

    Hi Rhetoric

    Thanks for the comment. You can track “Views” right now in overall gallery, in the bottom right corner. See: http://i.minus.com/iZ8GKtxafJkfq.png — so it shows the file size and overall gallery views . The downloads count we can add in the future but for now we took it out, as it’s confusing when you have gallery of images, files so on so forth :\

    Glad you like Minus and excited to see your launch. Be sure to utilize the Minus profiles.

    Cheers!

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