Droptext Adds Dropbox Text Editing to iOS

Dropbox, the free cloud-storage and kinda-backup service, is awesome. One of its best features is to let you share all the documents on your computer with your iPad, iPhone, Android device and soon, your BlackBerry. It would seem, then, to be the perfect way to work around Apple’s excruciating file-transfers for the iPad. There’s just […]

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Dropbox, the free cloud-storage and kinda-backup service, is awesome. One of its best features is to let you share all the documents on your computer with your iPad, iPhone, Android device and soon, your BlackBerry. It would seem, then, to be the perfect way to work around Apple's excruciating file-transfers for the iPad. There's just one catch: you can't actually edit your files.

Droptext fixes this. The application, from developer Kevin Smith, does one thing: It connects to your online Dropbox and lets you edit text files. Up until now, you have had to open the file in a separate application and then try to save it back, somehow, into the original Dropbox folder as a copy. That, or you need to buy one of the capable but ugly and expensive office apps like Office HD.

Smith's app is dead simple. Once you have signed into your Dropbox account, you can browse files and folders. Anything that is editable has an icon. Tap that icon and the document opens in edit view. Tap "Save" to save. That's it.

Any plain text file can be opened, from TXT through PHP, HTML and M. RTF and Word docs cannot be viewed or edited, however. You can also create and delete files, although to actually send them anywhere you'll need to fire up a different Dropbox-aware application.

In my short testing, Droptext crashed on me several times. The iTunes store page promises "bug fixes" as "coming soon". The biggest draw of this app is the price, though. At just $1, it's worth having the 2.9MB app around for when you need it.

Droptext [iTunes via iLounge]

Dropbox Anywhere [Dropbox]

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