It's very cumbersome to navigate across the old versions in the history of a file that is very frequently changed. For instance, the history of a text note edited in an application that uses auto-save (e.g. Obsidian) will look like this:
(it's actually even longer, I had to cut the middle part!)
While saving a copy often makes sense to be safe, I don't need to keep that many copies of the file in my history.
When I reach the bottom of the page, I need to click on the button "Charger les anciennes versions" (FR) / "Load older versions" (trying to translate myself, not sure if accurate) many times in a row in order to dig through the history. It is not convenient at all and there is no way to accelerate the process.
Note: in this thread I won't be dealing with the bandwidth issue. I will assume that Dropbox is smart enough to apply text diff on text files and use minimum bandwidth. In addition, I've already read about changing Preferences > Network > Custom bandwidth settings > Limit upload rate, but that will not make a big difference for text files which are very cheap, esp. if Dropbox uses text diff (in the example above, each increment is less than 0.1 KB).
Suggestion 1: upstream improvement: minimum upload interval
Add an option to set the minimum upload interval (possibly customizable per folder or file extension). This is more reliable that bandwidth and has a different aim.
Ex: 1 set minimum upload interval to 1mn, so history shows at most 1 version per minute. In my example, it would divide the number of intermediate versions by about 5
Record merge variant (safer): internally, Dropbox keeps syncing the file as fast as it can (so if you write a lot in 50s and your computer explodes, at least you can keep your last version), but only one record is kept after every given interval of time. This would combine upload safety and reduced history.
Diff quantity variant: if diff is possible (mostly for text files), user can decide a certain threshold of change after which a new record is kept (so that when navigating history, each version increment has enough relevant changes to be worth adding a new version).
Suggestion 2: downstream (interface) improvement: group versions by date
The history could keep all the intermediate versions, as long as we show all the versions in a cleaner way. I suggest to group the versions by date: by minute, hour, day, month, week, year.
For instance, for me, 1 day is a much more useful unit of time than ~10 seconds (as currently done) since I'm interested in adding new paragraphs and sections to my notes and not just a sentence or two.
Interface-wise, this could be represented with foldable headers, and there could be some custom date range filter as well.
Suggestion 3: downstream (interface) improvement: paginate
Pagination is the first thing I thought about when I had to click on the "Load older versions" button many times. This is how many websites work and it has the advantage to skip pages and travel in time quite fast. A page is not a unit of time though so it may need some extra work to find the correct date.
Suggestions 2 and 3 could be combined by having a timeline bar (horizontal or vertical) that you can scroll over quickly (a bit as in Discourse forum) to find a version at a given date. This would combine the advantage of spatial navigation and identifiable timestamps.
Finally, the upstream and downstream suggestions are compatible. User could reduce the number of intermediate versions if they're certain they won't miss it, then navigate across relevant intermediate versions over even longer periods of time, quickly.
