Using Jaguar's
Finder for FTP
by
Alan Zisman (c) 2003 First published in LowEndMac , February
11, 2003 X-Basics column
FTP is an old Unix service that has a long history of being used to
transfer
files. In fact, email messages were originally text files transferred
via
FTP.
Jaguar's
Go/Connect
to Server menu makes traditional FTP software (programs like Fetch)
unnecessary
for many people. Here's how to do it.
In the
Finder/Go/Connect
to Server dialogue, if you type
ftp://domain_name
you'll be
connected
to an anonymous ftp server (if available). This might be just what you
need.
You'll be asked for authentication with user-name and password if that
domain
doesn't offer an anonymous ftp service.
My web host,
however,
maintains an optional anonymous ftp service-- so if I type
ftp://zisman.ca,
I go there, rather than to my (password-protected) folders, which is
where
I want to go.
If instead, you type
ftp://user_name@domain_name
you'll get a
log-in
prompt, with the user name already filled in, waiting for you to enter
the
password.
And if you
type:
ftp://user_name:password@domain_name
you'll go
right in with
no log-in needed (assuming you typed everything correctly!). Of course,
doing
that, anyone looking over your shoulder can read your password.
- Thanks to
Jesse Feiler,
author of Osborne Books' Mac
OS
X Jaguar: The Complete Reference, for help in working this out.
Unix fans
will notice
that there's nothing mysterious about this; it's all standard Unix FTP
syntax.
Once
connected, a network
drive icon will appear on the desktop; opening it allows you to copy
files
to your Mac from the remote FTP host. Of course, performance will be
much
more sluggish than working on a local system or on a local area
network.
(It appears that you can only copy to your Mac; to make changes to the
remote
site, you'll still need a 'real' ftp program).
Some may
prefer to use
the Terminal's command line FTP service. That works fine, you just need
to
know a little bit more about what you're doing!