Probably A Completely Unrealistic Question Regarding Sync Clients.

[Adahl]

I have to ask it anyway, since Sync could be such an ideal solution for my work place.

 

Anyhow, hi! I work for a Norwegian government institution that scans very old documents and photographic materials of historic properties and provides them to our specialists and externs in the field. Sadly we cannot simply make all of our files public to everyone in a big photo album, as there are a plethora of legal issues involved with making these scans available to the general public. Also, our scans are uncommonly large and we simply do not have the infrastructure, *if* we were allowed to share the whole bunch of them publicly.

 

Many of the people who require these files work for the institution and have their own VPN connection to our network, but a small but significant percentage are externs, like researchers from other companies or institutions, or simply interested individuals of mostly elderly age that are usually not too keen with computers. For all those usebility issues, we cannot 'demand' them to download and install 'our' download software on their computers, just so they can receive our scanned documents.

 

Currently we use a less then ideal solution, an FTP server from which we email file links to the people who need them. For some technical and legal reasons, we cannot use cloud storage solutions like Dropbox. But a tip led me to Bittorrent Sync, which seems like an ideal, secure solution for us. Except for the part where we have to make our people download clients for it in order to use it.

 

So my question is this. Would it be possible / would you consider developing a Bittorrent Sync client in ASP or Java, so our people won't have to download separate client software? I'm not very computer savvy, so I completely understand if my question isn't very sensible. I apologize in advance, I don't mean to rub anyone the wrong way with my obvious lack of technical knowledge.

Thanks.

By the way, I did not put this topic under 'feature request' as it seemed to be like asking for a bit more than just a feature. But feel free to move the topic there if you prefer it.

Edited March 13, 2014 by Adahl

[ChrisH]

ASP will not help you, because the code will then still run on the server, not the client. Something like a Java applet might work, but the user probably would have to acknowledge lots of warning messages because the applet has to access both the network and local files. Besides, who has Java still installed by default these days?

It might be possible to create a ClickOnce-Wrapper or something around btsync in order to ease the download/installation process, but you would still have to enter the secret and select the local sync folder.

Maybe an AutoIt-File that does the download, installation and configuration might be worth looking into? Then your users just would have to click on a link to the compliled Autoit-Exe and all the other steps would be done automatically.

[Adahl]

Fair points, especially regarding Java. I was already not happy with the idea of Java, since it can be so cumbersome to use on the older and poorly maintained computers elderlies are likely to use. AutoIt sounds interesting, but we can't limit our users to the Windows platform (which is true for ClickOnce also). They tend to come from all walks of life. It's one of the reason why Bittorrent Sync seemed like such a good idea, as it isn't limited by platform.

I fear we may have to continue to use FTP then. Never thought I'd be still relying on that so much in 2014.  I'll continue to be on the lookout for a more elegant solution though. Either way, thanks for the help.

Edited March 14, 2014 by Adahl