We had an FTP freak-out here tonight.  If Clint had been working on something besides his Dad’s blog, it could have been a pain in the neck because we’d have had to either transfer everything to my laptop, or upload over the network—which just seems like a really bad idea, not to mention slow.

Our versions of Filezilla have been misbehaving for quite some time, only allowing us to stay connected for a couple of minutes at a time, dropping the connection even while we’re in the middle of dragging and dropping files.  I decided that I was tired of dealing with this, so I downloaded the new version to my laptop today.  It stayed connected alright, but then it decided that it didn’t want to let me move things from one folder to another, so I deleted it and went back to the old version.

When Clint had issues staying connected tonight, I told him to give the new version a shot, thinking it might behave better for him.   He downloaded it, but couldn’t get it to open, so I copied my version to his desktop; that one wouldn’t open either. He finally went to Mozilla’s website, where he discovered that the new version is for Mac Os X  v10.5 (Leopard) only, and that they no longer support 10.4 (Tiger) or older.  They don’t even have the older versions available for download!  This wouldn’t have been such a big deal, except when Clint got rid of the new non-working copies of Filezilla, something happened to his old version, and it wouldn’t open!  After some quick searching, we found a few websites that still had an older version of Filezilla available but Clint couldn’t get any of THOSE to work either, so I set out to find him an alternative.

It took me awhile, but I found several promising free FTP clients, and I thought I’d share them with you!  (Don’t you feel special now?)  The first three are Mac only (all compatible with Tiger, of course), and the last two are for Mac AND Windows.

1)  RBrowser

• RBrowser is a full featured free graphic FTP-SFTP client. RBrowser allows the user to manage/browse files on the remote host with an easy-to-use graphic interface. File management includes move, copy, duplicate, compress, delete,set permissions, make links, etc…
• Remote Editing, Folder Synchronization.
• Entire file trees can be moved between local and remote host, or between remote hosts by simple drag & drop.
• Remote-to-Remote File Transfers between any hosts, regardless of protocol
• Run Any number of operations simultaneously.

RBrowser screenshot

2)  Fugu

• Drag and drop upload and download of files.
• External editor support.
• Image previews.
• Directory upload (not natively supported in SFTP).
• Permissions, owner and group modification.
• Directory histories.
• Support for international characters, including Chinese and Japanese glyphs.
• A Console, which may be used like a command line SFTP session.
• Support for Public Key Authentication.
• Support for connections to alternate ports.
• Full Aqua interface.
• SCP support.
• Ability to create SSH Tunnels.
• Keychain support.

Fugu screenshot

3)  Cyberduck

Cyberduck is an FTP program of the old school. Much like the venerable Fetch, it gives you one window into your web server in list/outline view. From that window you can move files and folders back and forth between you Mac and your web server. It’s easy and simple. The tutorial takes about three minutes to read. If you have any experience with FTP clients, you’ll be up and running immediatly.

Cyberduck has the basic features you would expect from a modern FTP client. With it you can upload and download files and folders, create new files and folders on your web server, change permissions, rename and move both files and folders and resume transfers. It also works hand-in-hand with most popular html editors to allow you to edit text based files directly on your web server.

In addition it has a nice bookmarks setup and offers synchronization of local and remote folders and supports the whole gamut of secure transfer protocols.

Cyberduck screenshot

4)  FireFTP

• It’s free!
• Cross-platform: Works on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux
• Secure: SSL/TLS/SFTP support, same encryption used with online banking and shopping
• Synchronization: Keep directories in sync while navigating
• Directory Comparison: Compare directory content (compares subdirectories too!)
• International: Available in over 20 languages
• Character Set Support: UTF8 and just about any other character encoding supported
• Automatic reconnect and resuming of tranfers
• Search/Filtering
• Integrity Checks of transfers (XMD5, XSHA1)
• Export/Import accounts
• Remote Editing
• File Hashing: Generate hashes of files (MD5, various SHA’s)
• Drag & Drop
• File Compression: Using MODE Z
• Timestamp Synchronization
• Proxy support
• FXP support
• Advanced properties (CHMOD, recursive CHMOD, thumbnails)
• Tutorials and help files available for support
• IPv6 support
• Open Source!
• Seamless integration with Mozilla Firefox
• …did we mention it’s free?

FireFTP screenshot

5) Classic FTP

Runs on Windows 98/2000/Xp/Vista
Runs on Mac OS X
Upload to a website using file transfer protocol (FTP)
Work like a conventional ftp client
Visually compare your local drive and what’s online
Manually download selected files
Manually connect and disconnect to site
Completely Free

Classic FTP for Mac screenshot

Classic FTP for Windows screenshot

And a bonus, that’s a bit different from the others:

MacFusion

From the website:

MacFusion brings all sorts of information to your Mac in the form of files and folders displayed as just another “Volume” on your Mac desktop. Right now you can use this software to show a Secure Shell or Secure FTP share from another computer on your macs desktop, letting you manipulate the files on it as if they were on your own computer. MacFusion can also do the same for any File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server, giving read/write FTP in the finder for the first time! MacFusion works using open source technology called FUSE ported by Google to the Mac platform (MacFuse). MacFusion is based on plugins, so you can expect exciting new file systems coming to your desktop in the future! This includes the files from your gmail account, pictures from Flickr, encrypted volumes using encfs, source code repositories using subversion, and more!

I really like the idea of being able to have my server on my desktop, of being able to access it as if it were right here in my house, from within my Finder.  I think I’ll be giving this one a try.  If you’d like to know how it works out, please leave me a comment here, and I’ll respond either in the comments, or by email.  (If there’s enough interest, I’ll do another post about it.)

MacFusion screenshot