Familiar app based
interface

DocMoto Product Ethos

It is so important that any software is easy to use and not just a big frustration.

From the outset DocMoto was designed to be simple to use. The basic building blocks of the system are folders and files. A concept that almost all computer users are comfortable with. Unlike almost all other document and email management companies we do not expect users to learn new concepts such as vaults, cabinets, workspaces and so on. On a Mac DocMoto looks like Finder. On a Windows system it looks like Explorer.

Browser vs native app

DocMoto’s main user interfaces are native app based rather than browser based. The reason for taking this design decision being that browsers operate in a sandboxed environment.  This sandbox provides a barrier between the host computer and the internet. The sandbox is necessary because browsers can view any content from any site, some of which might be malicious.

In 99% of applications the sandboxed environment is fine, since most applications do not require access to the host computer’s resources, other than for the occasional file download.

For a document manager the sandbox can represent some significant barriers. Users are limited to the HTML file download functionality. They are also limited to the download location dictated by the browser. It isn’t readily possible to download folder paths in a browser’s download area which makes handling files with the same name but different locations very difficult to achieve. Drag and drop is also limited, with most apps now supporting drag in, but drag out is not supported by HTML5. Finally a browser’s interface is outside of the app developers control. In particular, features like forward, backward and refresh need to be handled, which is very difficult, if not impossible to do completely.

Taken as a whole these limitations make the difference between a product being used, or not. It is really that serious.