Best FTP clients
in [Mac Systems]
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From: Steven Fisher on 21 Mar 2010 20:37 In article <jollyroger-23F34F.16282521032010(a)news.individual.net>, Jolly Roger <jollyroger(a)pobox.com> wrote: > You should have qualified it then. I thought we were talking to end users here. It seems more like you should have qualified your "completely wrong." Steve
From: Wes Groleau on 21 Mar 2010 21:51 gl4317(a)yahoo.com wrote: > My impression was that IE's code runs the directory windows, since IE and > Windows are so heavily intertwined. > As such, since the basics of IE's code is at its core the web browser NCSA > Mosaic (take a look at the About Internet Explorer menu sometime - it > credits National Center for Supercomputer Applications' Mosaic as being > the origin) it was probably more by accident that FTP got built into > windows. The feature is not in other browsers that derived from mosaic. Point is, if they could do it (and all the third party folks could do it), then Apple could do it. Why they apparently aren't trying now, I don't know. Why they tried and failed with Network browser, I also don't know. It's not that I'm bitter about it--I really don't need a GUI, since rsync and sitecopy not only handle entire directory hierarchies, they do it more efficiently by not transferring things that are identical. It's just that it puzzles me that ONE thing Apple couldn't do was done by M$ ten years ago, when generally the failures are on the other side of the fence. Maybe Apple is saving face by pretending they didn't want to. :-) > The one thing that I really hate about using FTP in IE or some other web > browsers is that with the built in memorty URL, you have to be sure to > clear the URL memory. Otherwise, it remembers your username and password > as it is built into the URL - at least with the way windows does it. I think that's not an issue. The few times I've used it, it puts the URI up without the ID and password, and I have to add it in. Also, you don't have to put ID and password in the URI. If you omit one or both, IE will ask you for it (them) in a pop-up. You say other web browsers--is there another that can now drag and drop directories? Last time I looked, only IE would do it (and you had to set a flag in options for that). -- Wes Groleau Standards?a parable http://Ideas.Lang-Learn.us/WWW?itemid=145
From: Wes Groleau on 21 Mar 2010 21:54 Ian Gregory wrote: > On 2010-03-21, Wes Groleau <Groleau+news(a)FreeShell.org> wrote: >> Ten years ago the evil empire made two-way FTP transparent. > > So on Windows you can edit a file that exists on a remote FTP server in > the same way you can edit a local file? Hmmm, that's a good point--though I think it IS possible. I'm certainly going to check. > Perhaps I am missing something, but in any case, Apple would have had to > have a good reason for not making FTP read-write in the Finder, it > certainly wasn't laziness or lack of skills. Well, calling it a bug in the man page sounds like one or the other. And the length of time Network Browser existed without being robust seems like a skill problem. It's puzzling, because it just doesn't seem characteristic of Apple. -- Wes Groleau Standards?a parable http://Ideas.Lang-Learn.us/WWW?itemid=145
From: Wes Groleau on 21 Mar 2010 22:07 M-M wrote: > Some of us need an ftp client so we can update our web pages. "Connect > to server" will not allow that. Most web hosting providers offer web-based file managers (which I consistently hate!) And the command line sitecopy is very easy to use. rcp and scp, if supported, are even easier. If you have sufficient control over your server account, you can mount it NFS and presto! there's your fully- integrated-into-finder solution. So, while I may soapbox about the "connect to server" limitation, it really is of little consequence. -- Wes Groleau Standards--a parable http://Ideas.Lang-Learn.us/WWW?itemid=145
From: Jeffrey Goldberg on 21 Mar 2010 22:19
On 2010-03-21 8:51 PM, Wes Groleau wrote: > It's just that it puzzles me that ONE thing Apple couldn't do was > done by M$ ten years ago, when generally the failures are on the > other side of the fence. Maybe Apple is saving face by pretending > they didn't want to. :-) If we are going to speculate, let me throw this one out (not that I can make a case for it). Maybe Apple recognized that, like FORTRAN, FTP should really be dead. <Rant> FTP is a terribly designed protocol. And there is nothing that FTP does that HTTP doesn't do better. But for some reason, people still set up FTP servers for uploading web pages, when these things could be done through HTTP's POST method. Web browsers just haven't been designed to make use of this power of HTTP. FTP is also a pain in the backside for network administrators. In one mode of operation it uses its standard port, 21, for sending commands back and forth, but opens another (less predictable) port for actually sending the data. This makes it very easy for FTP to interact badly with firewalls. FTP certainly was never designed to act as a writable remote file system. Sure you can try to use it that way, but without proper locking and other controls, the chances of ending up with zero-ed files is substantial. I really wish FTP would die. </Rant> So maybe Apple decided that ditching FTP writes in the Finder was like ditching floppy drives. This doesn't seem all that plausible, but I thought I would mention the possibility. When I get to choose hosting services, I insist on rsync support. When I've had to work with hosting services (not of my choice) that were FTP only I used lftp which will attempt to simulate rsync over FTP. -j -- Jeffrey Goldberg http://goldmark.org/jeff/ I rarely read HTML or poorly quoting posts Reply-To address is valid |