New Version Of SkyDrive Built Using HTML5 To Be Available Soon

[Richard Chao]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_live/b/windowslive/archive/2011/06/20/introducing-skydrive-for-the-modern-web-built-using-html5.aspx' target='_blank'>http://windowsteamblog.com/windows_...sing-html5.aspx</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"So starting today, we are launching a new version of the SkyDrive website. We took advantage of modern browsers and HTML5 to make SkyDrive faster, easier to navigate, and more beautiful for viewing photos."</em></p><p><object width="600" height="360" data="http://www.youtube.com/v/YdhB2u2mOLM&amp;feature=player_embedded&amp;ap=%26fmt=18" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"><param name="src" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/YdhB2u2mOLM&amp;feature=player_embedded&amp;ap=%26fmt=18" /></object></p><p>Microsoft will soon be launching a new version of the SkyDrive website using HTML5. &nbsp;By using HTML5, SkyDrive will be significantly faster. &nbsp;For example, selecting folders and photo albums will now take only 100-300 milliseconds instead of the current 6-9 seconds. &nbsp;In addition, by building the new SkyDrive using HTML5 on a modern browsers, such as IE9, it will be able to take advantage of hardware accelerated graphics thereby making it faster to click through photo slideshows. &nbsp;Navigation is also improved is this version with the addition of SkyDrive Groups and the elimination of ads. &nbsp;</p><p>Watch the video above to get an overview of the new SkyDrive. &nbsp;</p>

[ptyork]

Definitely cool and a welcome change. Still need two major things to make it a truly useful service. First is the ability to increase the storage limit (and the maximum file size). 25 GB (and 100 MB per file) is not enough these days. Obviously you'd pay for it, but I think many would pay to be able to centralize their cloud storage in a single place.

Second is the integration with Live Mesh. I want WAY more than 5 GB of automatically synced cloud storage. The firewall between the two services is both ugly and debilitating.

Nice to have would be easy drive mapping and per-file sharing. And of course some more "no brain required" sync services like Apple is tossing into their iCloud service.

Regardless, this is shaping up nicely, and I'm really loving what HTML5+CSS3 can accomplish. I kind of hope Microsoft slowly backs away from WPF/Silverlight and adopts these as their "standard" GUI development environment. XAML (the WPF/Silverlight version of HTML) is convoluted as all get out. Happily, it looks like Windows 8 is moving in this direction.

[djdj]

If by 'soon' you mean 'now,' you'd be correct.