3 Stations East

Ducks to Trucks, or, How I Stopped Worrying and Learned To Love Spending $30 on an FTP Client

nobody@vox.com(Paul) — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 11:31:42 -0500

As I've been blogging recently, I've been in a state of flux when it comes to my FTP client. And when I posted "Dogs to Ducks", I had pretty much hung my hat on the coatrack that is Cyberduck, a great open source FTP client for the Mac.

But then something developery happened: I filed a support ticket for the developer to include what is standard OS behavior in his app. It's standard on both the Mac and Windows, in fact. But he said no, because he didn't like it.

Now, I can respect that to a degree and ultimately chose to do just that. I'm not an application developer (well, not since the early 90s and RAMGauge for Windows) and can understand wanting to balance one's own needs/wants versus the audience's. I certainly could have pressed the issue, and could have hounded this guy and had it done.

Or, I could have just chosen another app - which I did. I chose Transmit.

In my first post on FTP clients I noted that I'd rather spend $30 on shoes. This remains true. But if I liken Transmit to a pair of shoes, it's like Birkenstocks: in it for the long haul, designed to last.

My new-found love for Transmit came through when I was working on the Daily Ping rebuild last weekend. I was sitting there moving files between remote directories - fairly monotonous. I thought to myself, "Gee, I wish this thing had tabs!" So I pressed Command-T almost in a joking fashion and, sure enough, a tab opened. Fantastic! And I was able to drag and drop between tabs, too! Just as I should!

Best of all, it supports the standard rename method: click a name, wait a beat, type the new name. That's how it should be.

Transmit also passes the test that Fetch failed in that I can edit files remotely and not suffer some weird side effects in its window. Apparently it can even edit images (or anything) remotely - I have yet to use this. In fact there are a lot of things I have yet to use in Transmit.

It Just Works

Moreso, Transmit feels like a natural part of the OS. I mean this in a good way. The interface is Aqua and carefully constructed. There are the little touches one should expect from a Mac app; for instance when opening a second tab for the first time, it doesn't just blotchily pop up - the entire tab bar slides down into view from beneath the toolbar.

It also uses drawers smartly (there are about 2 such applications), and unlike older versions of Cyberduck, doesn't employ crazy multiple drawers.

It adds a status icon to its Dock icon to tell you what's going on. Its Favorites integrate delightfully with QuickSilver. And, it even supports SOCKS. Which is appropriate given I compared it to a shoe earlier.

One more thing that won me over was Transmit's Dashboard widget. I don't use widgets, but anyone who makes a little truck drive down a highway (with bumps and all!) whilst uploading a file deserves my hard-earned cash.

Summary

Fetch made me growl. Cyberduck made me smile. Transmit makes me happy. It's a great application, and my thanks to the folks at Panic for making it. Keep up the great work.

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Ducks to Trucks

nobody@vox.com(Paul) — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 20:05:40 -0500

Last month I wrote about my experiences with Mac FTP clients. I'm afraid time is of the essence right now and I can't provide another medium-shallow-depth analysis; instead I'll leave my opinion to my medium-shallow Photoshop skills.

Here Comes the Truck

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Shot Down!

nobody@vox.com(Paul) — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 07:17:17 -0500

Yeah, remember that lone issue with Cyberduck? The renaming files thing? The one I submitted a ticket about?

Shot down!

...but... but I like it.

Now, knowing it might not be incorporated is honestly making me reconsider my use of Cyberduck. Yes, after I wrote a long entry about its praises.

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Dogs to Ducks

nobody@vox.com(Paul) — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 20:55:34 -0500

Fetch, Cyberduck

Update: Be sure to read this entry too, which is making me reconsider my use of Cyberduck.

When you work on web sites, there are a few tools you get to become buddy-buddy with. Your text editor. Your photo editor. Your browsers. Your FTP program.

Of course, your FTP program. Where would you be without it? You'd be up a creek without a paddle, that's where you'd be!

When I switched to the Mac six years ago, I first used InterArchy. It worked, but not too pleasantly for my tastes. I then switched to Fetch, whose website looks the same as it did in 2000. Fetch did everything I needed it to do, and did it without complaint. In time I became a beta tester for the 5.0 release and thought it was a solid improvement.

But no relationship is without its idiosyncracies, and the little Fetch dog occasionally made me growl. Like, for instance, when I was editing a file on the server with TextWrangler. Let's say I edit a file, and in the Fetch window navigate to another folder. I then go do something (gee, upload a file?) and head back to TextWrangler. I hit save. But wait! I navigated to another folder, right? Fetch took care of that. It helpfully navigated to where the open file was saved, and saved it.

Then when I needed to upload another file to that folder I navigated to earlier, I'd just drag it onto Fetch's window. But... you guessed it... the window had been pointing to where the TextWrangler file lived. Meaning I just uploaded it to the wrong folder, because Fetch "forgot" where I was. Oops.

I am a creature of habit, as are you, but I still toyed with the idea of switching FTP clients - particularly, Transmit. Transmit is, in a word, fantastic. It's beautiful (much prettier than Fetch if you ask me), it's useful, it is tightly integrated with TextWrangler or whatever text editor you'd like to use, and it costs money. $30, to be specific.

$30 is not a lot of money for an FTP program. But you know, I'd rather buy a pair of shoes for that $30.

I recall trying out an open-source FTP program called Cyberduck a year or so ago and thinking it really sucked. It did. It was awful. The interface sucked, the everything sucked. The icon? Well, I'm not a fan of too much cutesy-ness in my Dock. But a duck? Okay. Whatever. Say hi to Adium.

(I don't really use Adium; I don't really IM on the Mac.)

I totally forgot about InterArchy until Gruber mentioned it, and I will admit the interface looks absolutely fantastic. Its ability to look just like Finder has been a strength - or weakness - since its early days. But InterArchy, too, costs the money.

Something got in my noggin about 3 weeks ago, however, and Cyberduck was referenced in some forum or blog I was reading. I thought, "Why not give it a shot?" So for the past three weeks, the dog and the duck have been sitting side by side in my dock. (Fetch is to the left, so he can't see the Cyberduck; he's just fetching the floppy disk to the giant TextWrangler logo in front of him.)

I plunged into Cyberduck the same way I did RSS: wholeheartedly. I set up shortcuts for the FTP sites I used the most and saved them so I could use QuickSilver to access them. But a thought: "Gee, that display is fugly." I really thought that: "fugly". Vertical lines. No alternating row lines. No horizontal lines. Egads, it's 1987.

But wait! A preference? Yes! A preference for it. So I can make Cyberduck have pretty alternating row columns and no stupid horizontal or vertical lines, the way I like it. Great!

And I can make a double-click equal "Edit in TextWrangler" instead of "Put the file on the desktop" like Fetch - one of the most annoying things ever? Yes!

And it has a Transfers window! And a drawer for Bookmarks! Swell! Lovely!

And somehow, I got sold on this once ugly duckling. The little Fetch dog has been without his companion, Running Triangle, underneath him. He's been kind of nonresponsive, just sitting there mid-jump with his floppy.

There is one flaw with the Duck, though: I can't rename files like I do in Finder, by clicking the filename once. The first time I encountered this, I actually said, "Ooooooh," in a bad way. Instead I have to open an info window and edit it there. No preference for that, at least none I've found. (Note: after R'ingTFM I learned that I could click a filename and then press Return and then edit it. Lame.) The plus side is that I was able to submit a ticket for this, which is great.

Is it a deal-breaker? Time will tell. But my instinct says no. I'll trade the awkward renaming mechanism for the multiple little problems I had with Fetch, which all added up to a dull headache.

I will admit I'm pleased there are more than a couple of great FTP clients out there for the Mac. All I've mentioned in this post are great in their own ways but, for me, the Cyberduck wins.

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