Since I’ve just uploaded a bunch of files via FTP to update WordPress, I might as well mention something about FTP clients on the Mac. People keep recommending Transmit, which I know is full of liquid awesome like what everyone says, but I’m a starving NSF with a barely adequate income. Paying US$30 for an FTP client is just out of the question.

At this point, I usually give up and just use Cyberduck, but it turns out Cyberduck has its own little quirk. Every time I do an upload, it insists on performing what seems like multiple ls commands to grab the timestamp of every file that it’s about to overwrite before it even begins the upload process. It also doesn’t help that performing any other task (clicking on a toolbar button, opening the application preferences) while this happens will summon the dreaded beachball.

But then, through sheer luck (read: Wikipedia), I learned that FileZilla now has a Mac version! Granted, its interface is utterly un-Mac-like and the entire application is essentially unchanged from the Windows version, but here’s the bottom line: it’s free and reliable. It may not be pretty, but FileZilla works incredibly well. And really, isn’t that all you need?

Posted in Geekiness by jiunwei at December 29th, 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.