Over the past month, we’ve been exclusively reporting some of the new features that is coming to SkyDrive.com. Today over on the official SkyDrive team blog, Microsoft has officially confirmed some of these new features that are coming to SkyDrive.com. It is probably one of the biggest update we’ve seen for a while, so we’ve summarised what’s new below:
- Bundled sharing – We’ve introduced this previously as “Shared lists”, which is the ability to share individual groups of files anywhere on your SkyDrive. Previously, you could only share either an entire folder, or individual files inside a folder. However you couldn’t selectively share multiple files, or files that are across different folders. With this new feature, you can now share two photos from your camera roll, or a hundred (in fact the limit is 100 files). You can share a file in one folder along with another file from a different folder. The recipient will only see those file that you shared in the bundle, without seeing anything else in the folder. Check it out below:
- New Shared view – We’ve also previously hinted at a new Shared view coming to SkyDrive.com. Indeed, Microsoft has introduced a new Shared view which now shows the files you’ve shared, as well as what’s been shared with you. Your own stuff is at the top of the list, sorted by what you’ve most recently shared. This is followed by a list of people who’ve shared something with you, sorted by who shared things most recently.
- Folder filters in All photos view – We’ve told you about this before, and today’s update brought a filter control to the All photos view. You can now filter the photos in this view to a specific folder on your SkyDrive, and also set that folder filter as the default view.
- Text file editor – We’ve also told you about this one before too, that SkyDrive.com is getting an in-built text file editor, codenamed “Monaco”. With this update, SkyDrive now has native support for viewing and editing text files, including JavaScript, CSS, HTML, SQL, and many other code files. It also supports “diff” changes, so you can see conflicts between edits. The text editor supports line numbering, syntax highlighting, completion suggestions, find and replace, as well as control-space (IntelliSense). You can learn more about the text file editor on Channel 9.
- Photo rotation – SkyDrive.com now supports photo rotation within the browser, so you no longer have to tilt your head to view that photo that was incorrectly rotated by your camera.
- Enhanced high DPI display support – Previously, when you’re viewing photos on SkyDrive.com using high DPI displays, you only get a up-scaled version of the thumbnail instead of the actual photo in its full resolution. The new update fixes this and now when your screen (and browser) supports it, SkyDrive.com will show the higher resolution photos and thumbnails on these high DPI displays.
- Animated GIF support – Well, as the name suggests, animated GIFs are now…animated on SkyDrive.com.
- File sharing without recipient signing in – In the previous update, Microsoft added support for sharing Office documents without having the recipient having to sign in. In this update, this capability is now extended to any SkyDrive files shared via email.
- Backed up device settings – We’ve also told you about this before, and the new settings page is now available. The page allows you to see which devices has their settings backed up to SkyDrive and its last backup date, as well as letting users delete these backed up settings.
The update is currently being rolled out to users, and you should be seeing the update on your SkyDrive.com very soon. Of course, we have previously also reported other features that will be coming to SkyDrive.com, including recent activity feeds and folder mounting. Whilst these didn’t make it into today’s update, we understand that they should be coming in future updates. As always, stay tuned at LiveSide as we bring you the latest on SkyDrive.com!