Just signed up here… hoping today is the day for the Windows beta! 
Question about the program - I currently am trying out Liquid Story Binder and StoryBox as well as waiting for WinScriv, and I am able to use Dropbox with them to keep files available for when I’m on the road on my laptop, etc. Is Scrivener able to work with Dropbox as well? I’m assuming it is, but thought it safer to check before messing something up
You would do well to read the posts on:
https://forum.literatureandlatte.com/t/working-off-of-network-drives-mobileme-thumb-drives/5101/1
Mark
Thanks for the link. Looks like it works if you’re careful (which I am). I’ve used it with Liquid Story Binder, which has a project split up into tons of files as well (like Scrivener appears to). I haven’t had any problems with it. I’ll try it out and see what happens, but keep a separate backup just in case
If I recall correctly shouldn’t be as big of an issue with Windows, but in theory it might be.
Myself, plan on testing that pretty hard to see if I can come up with any issues while working out of a dropbox folder. (While backing up regularly.)
The recommended way to work with dropbox and sync across different machines is to work out of a local folder, back up to dropbox, then open the backup on your other machine. (Ie desktop to netbook.)
I’m not sure where you heard the former. It’s the latter that is on target, although “might” is probably a little weak. I can’t think of a single reason why it would be any different than on the Mac, actually. There is literally zero difference between the formats. The only reason it shows up differently on the Mac is due to a central database system that says “these folders ought to be treated as a file”. There is no special file system bit, or anything tricky being employed. A project file created on a Windows computer and mirrored identically on a Mac will both create identical projects down to the byte (in theory).
Their treatment of the project files while open are very similar as well.
Do feel free to hammer away on it and test it. Try a variety of things you know will probably cause problems, like editing on an unconnected computer when you know it hasn’t been synced yet. Opening the project on two computers at once. Stuff that sounds dumb—but stuff that is extremely easy to do without realising it when you are busy and focussed on the tasks at hand. Some extra robustness has been coded into the new project format to protect against the absolute worst case scenarios, so testing would be good.
I followed the advice from Other Stuff You Might Want to Know from the tutorial:
So far that seems to be working. I’m new to Dropbox, but it is backing up my Scrivener files.
Well I couldn’t find the thread where their was discussion on it not being a big issue with the Windows version, and yea after looking at a saved mac version and windows version - pretty much the same. There have been reports for a while of issues… so doing a bit of both.
I have a backup copy of the project I have been testing between two machines and dropbox. Haven’t had any issues crop up… but I am using it for testing and backup only. My active project that I will be doing for NaNo (and other projects that are already finished or in-work), I zip and place in dropbox but sync with a local dir. Don’t actually use it.
Theory is, even if it is just fine, it is beta software. Why add another potential issue while we are chasing down bugs with the app itself. By not using dropbox as my active project folder removed one potential bug spot.