https://www.dropbox.com/developers/blog/19 is what you're thinking of, so yes. It's unfortunate though. With the Public folder, you can right click on any file and get a "Copy link to file" button. With the new sharing stuff, it opens up a page in the web browser where you click a button to copy a link to the file, and that link takes you to the file inside a dropbox page instead of a nice direct link. It's pretty horrific.
Actually, there seems to be a way to opt in to a Public folder: https://www.dropbox.com/help/16/en (search for "Creating a Public folder" on that page).
I haven't tried it yet, but that seems easy enough!
