Watch subfolders

[dazweeja]

Hi,

This program is great (fast, reliable) but after using the trial for a few days there's a couple of things that make me think that I won't be buying it yet:

1. Like many people, I came across this program looking for something to replicate WinSCP's folder watching functionality on a Mac. Am I mistaken or does it not watch subfolders? I generally work on large-ish projects in Eclipse and because Eclipse's FTP/RSE support is pretty bad I was looking for something to streamline my workflow. If I have to create 20-30 FTP watchers (one for each of the subfolders in a project), I don't think at this stage this program for me has many advantages over other (free) FTP programs. If I only had to create one FTP watcher per project, I'd be purchasing this in a flash.

2. I find the upload functionality a bit counter-intuitive. I was expecting in the New Connection dialog to be able to set an initial local directory but this doesn't seem the case. I believe you have to make a new connection, navigate to the directory and then select "Set as Home Folder". Is this correct? Once I had my local and remote directories set up, I right-clicked a file in a deeply nested subfolder and selected Upload. I was very surprised to see it uploaded to the root directory of my remote site instead of the equivalent subfolder on the remote site. Is there any way to get the behaviour I was expecting? It would definitely be a pain to have to navigate to the correct subfolder on both the local and remote views just to drag and drop a file across. I guess I'm used to the Dreamweaver FTP Manager which seems much more intuitive to me.

Again, it is a great program so I don't want to be too critical but I thought you should know about the things that make me (and maybe others) disinclined to purchase it when there are free alternatives which are almost as good.

Cheers,
Darren.

[JD]

Hi,

1. I am already considering adding such a feature for FTP Watchers for an update.

2. New Connection window has the Initial Path setting (amongst others) but they're hidden by default to make it simpler for novice users. Click the blue disclosure button at the bottom left of the New Connection window to show the advanced settings.

In any case, you should be using Bookmarks. The New Connection window is only really intended for exactly that - new connections. If you intend to connect to the same server over and over you should select Add Bookmark from the Bookmarks menu, or click Save when closing the FTP Browser window to the prompt to save the Bookmark. Saving as a Bookmark means lots of server specific settings will be saved - you can't do that for a new connection because there is nowhere to save it to, so the settings are lost when you disconnect.

Regarding the upload behavior, this is standard behavior for every FTP client out there. Dreamweaver is the exception. Having said that, I've already been asked to add this type of automatic routing capability when the 'Dual Browse' feature is enabled, and I intend to add that at some point.

Thanks for the feedback!

-Jason

[dazweeja]

Thanks for your prompt reply, JD. Correct me if I'm wrong but the Initial Path setting refers to the remote path, not the local path. It just seems more intuitive to me when I'm setting up a connection to enter host name, username, password, select my local copy of the files, enter the path to the remote folder containing the remote copy of the files, connect and bookmark (preferably in the one button), then a dialog asking for a name for the bookmark on a successful connection. That would be the simplest workflow for me with the least number of clicks.

I've really only used WS_FTP and Dreamweaver seriously over the years. They both behave in the way I described. The others just seemed like cutesy toys (Fetch, Cyberduck, etc). So it was very unexpected to me to have the dual view with a mirror of my files on the left and right and then to click on a file in a subfolder on the left and see it appear in the root folder on the right. I can see that it wouldn't be unexpected in a single view FTP client to upload to the current remote root folder but it just seems odd (and a little bit inconvenient) in a dual view client.

Thanks for your time and good luck with YummyFTP. I've only ever read positive reviews so I think it has a big future.

Cheers,
Darren.

[JD]

Yes, the initial path refers to the remote path - you didn't mention that you wanted to set the local path. I would therefore recommend ignoring the New Connection window altogether and go directly to creating a Bookmark from scratch:

Select "Show All Bookmarks" from the Bookmarks menu, then click the Add icon, configure all that you want (the local path is in the advanced settings tab) then click Save. From now on you can connect just by selecting the Bookmark name from the Bookmarks menu. Or of course you can double click it in the Bookmarks window.

You can change Yummy's behavior to not show the New Connection window and show the Bookmarks window instead - see the Interface panel of the preferences for that.

I didn't know WS_FTP had the auto routing feature. My statement referred to all FTP clients on the Mac

[KentR]

Yeah, I'd love these two also (subfolder watching and auto-routing like Dreamweaver) - also for use with Eclipse.

It would be nice to also to have further integration to selectively upload via context menu in the Eclipse UI.  Anyone know if there's an Eclipse plugin that lets one add custom context menu items?