Cyberduck normally is the FTP client of my choice, but I had to work on a server where uploading was not possible and directory listing extremely slow. Trying to change the amount of concurrent connections and active or passive modes did not help me out.

To verify it does not depend on my firewall configuration I have tried doing the same on Windows using Total Commander as FTP client. That has worked instantly without any issues and delays. From my former times on the glassy operating system I remembered on the free available cross platform FTP client FileZilla, so I decided to test it on my Mac. And the result is very positive.

FileZilla’s user interface is very well designed and gives many quick information of all the data I need. The feel of speed is awesome. It supports all today neccessary transfer standards and the preferences provide tons of settings in a tree organized view.

The most important thing for me of course is, that it does the thing what the Cyberduck still does not do the job even with comparing all combination of settings.

One primary functionality I do expect from a FTP client is to be able to use a custom editor to directly edit a remote file. I am very lucky that FileZilla does me that favour using my prefered programming and text editor (currently Smultron).

But when saving a remote file you need to go back to FileZilla to get it uploaded. That is no big deal, but an annoying message box is coming up recognizing that a file has changed. Of course it changed, and I want it to be uploaded. On no account I do not want to confirm that box, so I searched through the preferences. There is nothing and the official FileZilla forum does confirm that!

It has been filed, that there should be option for beeing able to auto-confirm that. The only way until now to get rid off it is to compile the source code with modification. So I did! That was quite horrible, because lot of errors occured during the makefile, but I hit the ground running.

Download the modified FileZilla client 3.2.4 without that always nerving message box compiled on OSX 10.5.6. I would be pleased, when you leave a short comment when downloading to appreciate all the time on spending getting it work. Just unzip after download and move to your Application folder. Thank you!

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April 22, 2009 • Posted in: Cool Mac OS X Apps