Readit Newsmtusman commented on Show HN: Fileshifter – Easily convert files and videos between different formats fileshifter.io/converter/... · Posted by u/mtusman
Hey, glad you liked it! I'm working on a new update that does exactly that! So, thanks for your suggestion.
Edit: Feature has now been implemented
It's nice!
Quick feedback for UX improvement: let the user upload a file first, detect the extension, then ask what file type to convert to.
Thanks for the feedback, I'll take it onboard and try my best to implement it.
Cool! I think you need a way to get back to the home screen so that someone can try another conversion. After I did the default png->pdf, there is nothing to click on to go back and try another conversion, besides editing the URL. (maybe a link 'try another' or just home) - but cool thanks for sharing! Edit: on Safari mac 10.13 if that helps
Hey, glad you liked it! I'm working on a new update that does exactly that! So, thanks for your suggestion.
Will this be open-sourced? I'd like the idea of a self-hosted version of this. Good work!
Thanks for your feedback. Really appreciate it. I’m looking into open sourcing some features it in the coming weeks and I’ll post an update on the website when that happens, so just keep checking.
Interesting. I tried to convert an iPhone photo from jpg to pdf (from phone) and it threw the following error: "C952B34B-95B4-4908-9018-C224DBB753A1.jpeg - File not in jpg format"
yep, looks like an error at the frontend. I’ll look it to it. Thanks for reporting it
Structurally, the service is hosted online as a website, this means one must upload a copy of their data to be converted. Naturally that raises questions because there's a lot we don't know about this site: who runs it, what are the terms of service (I saw none on the site), what are users granting the site owners to do with uploaded data? Answers to these are almost certainly guesses as this information is not readily available. The site source code is minified Javascript; designed to be terse and at the cost of legibility (variable names are often shortened, useful or long comments eliminated), certainly not the source code a developer would work with when writing the software.
How could this have been implemented in a way that obviates all of these show-stopper failings? Respect users' software freedom by offering users one or more programs to do the conversion jobs with reasonable default settings. Distribute complete corresponding source code alongside the rest of the site so as to let the user host an instance of the site on their own. Users so inclined can set this up for themselves and others, or use their software freedom to end up with a conversion service they don't need to guess about.
Hey, thanks for your feedback. I'm the guy that created the site. I agree that more information needs to be listed on the site about how the process works and also agree that the code needs some work. I'm a self-taught programmer and created this to put on my cv and thought it would just be cool to share what I created. I plan to add much more features and pages but just wanted to test what I've already created.
To those that are interested in understand out how the website works, the process goes as follows: the files are uploaded to the server and then uploaded to a private s3 bucket where the user will have an hour to download the converted content via a presigned url after which it will be permanently deleted. Furthermore, as soon as the file is converted, the original file is deleted from the server. In hindsight, I should have shipped an "about" page explaining this process.