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Box<\/a> introduced a new type of developer tool today called Box Elements, pre-packaged application pieces designed to deliver Box functionality with a few lines of code.<\/p>\n Eventually there will be three types of Elements: UI, app and services. Today, the company is launching the UI pieces, which include Content Uploader, which lets developers add drag and drop file capability into any application; Content Explorer, which lets developers insert Box file navigation in any application; Content Preview, which lets developers display any of 120 different file types inside an application including interactive video; and Content Picker, which enables developers to insert file picking capability inside an application.<\/p>\n While none of these sound like earth-shattering capabilities, each one would require a fair amount of development time to build from scratch. What Box is offering here is the ability to implement them quickly with little or no content expertise required.<\/p>\n If you think about how developers use Stripe to add payments, Box is trying to achieve the same level of simplicity with content services, according to Jeetu Patel, SVP of platform and chief strategy officer at Box.<\/p>\n \u201cWe always believed content is similar to payments. It would be counter-productive to think about building an eCommerce site and building a payment stack [from scratch], and it is just as illogical building a content stack,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Patel says Elements offer developers the fastest way to build apps on the Box platform and solves a real problem for programmers, who want to deliver a diverse set of experiences, but don\u2019t want to be an expert on every piece of the application. \u201cThe challenge we\u2019ve seen at most companies is that very few want to be a cloud content management firm, but they have pressure to build amazingly immersive experiences for internal or external audiences,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n It\u2019s important to understand that these Elements require Box on the back end, but they expose different parts of Box separate from the application itself. This is a vision that CEO Aaron Levie has been articulating for years. In an interview in 2014 with Jesse Hempel at SXSW<\/a> (go to 24:45 of this video), Levie indicated that over time \u2014 he cited five years from then \u2014 you might be using Box services inside of applications without even knowing it was Box. The tools announced today are a big step toward fulfilling that vision \u2014 ahead of the timetable that Levie thought at the time.<\/p>\n