In Mac app development there seems to be a constant race toward jumping the shark.
With apologies to Fonzie, it seems that no app is fully complete until it does email. Dropzone doesn’t do email. Yet. But Dropzone does plenty of useful tricks on a Mac and with little more than simple drag and drop.
Drag Me, Drop Me, Love Me
When it comes to apps, a tool usually does one or two things well. Think screwdriver or hammer. On the other hand, utilities often have a laundry list of functionality. Think Swiss Army Knife.
Allow me the discretion of placing Dropzone into the utility category because it has a list of useful functions that many Mac users may need.
Dropzone implies drag and drop, and that’s an accurate start. Copy or move files from one place to a predefined location using… drum roll, please… drag and drop.
Upload files to Flickr or an FTP server by using… here it is again… drag and drop. It’s the drop that’s the secret sauce in Dropzone.
Create zones with specific functionality. FTP. Zip and email. Upload to Flicker. Copy files from here to there. You get the idea. Drag something, drop it, something happens.
Dropzone couldn’t be easier to use, but it does require a little effort to set up the original destinations and associated actions.
Simplicity is key with Dropzone. It’s all drag and drop.
Once a zone has been setup then all that’s required is to drag and drop whatever onto a zone for it to do whatever you set the zone up to do.
Dropzone can open apps (not unlike dropping a file on the respective app in the Dock), email or upload files to TwitPic, Dropbox, or almost any online destination.
And, of course, it moves and copies files from the Finder or Desktop without the need to navigate through the Finder or folders for a destination location.
Once you get used to using Dropzone for basic functions, there’s a rather large community of user contributed scripts that give the app even more functionality.
Dropzone isn’t free, but could save you plenty of keyboard activity. The only problem I have with these so-called automated utilities is the time required to find out what went wrong when something goes wrong, and something will. It’s Murphy’s Law.





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