FireFTP

FireFTP is one of the worlds little rays of sunshine. If you have access to a server (webserver) and you have an ftp account on that server, then using FireFTP you can put all your html files, podcasts, media files, backup files, or anything you want online. It works across OSX, Windows, and Linux - this is very useful if you ever find yourself on someone else's machine or if you travel and find yourself stranded in an internet cafe in desperate need of an ftp application. Its free software, the download size is extremely small, and even better...the installation process is automated via Firefox, all you need is to do to install it is press one button. Its truly a wonderful thing.

Installing

FireFTP is a Firefox add-on so installation is easy. You just have to visit the Firefox Add-ons page - https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/

Then use the search function and type 'fireftp'

Press 'search' and you should see something like this:

Now click on the blue FireFTP title and you will sent to the installation page for FireFTP where you should spot something like this:

Now click on the big Green 'Install Now' button and an installation window will pop up :

Click on the Install Now' button. You will see a window pop up with a progress bar :

When the download and installation is finished (it all occurs automatically) you will see the following announcement :

Now press the 'Restart Firefox' button and the browser will quit and then restart. When it has restarted the FireFTP Add-on will be fully functional.

Starting FireFTP

All you need to do is click on the Tools menu and choose 'FireFTP' :

FireFTP will now open in a new window within Firefox :

The above is the FireFTP actually opens within the browser which might be a bit confusing at first. It will appear alongside all your other tabs (if you use tabs), its the same place as a normal webpage but its actually a full blown ftp application. If you are working from a laptop or have limited screen space then using FireFTP this way can be a great method to avoid continuously switching between an FTP application (to upload files to a website) and a browser (to see the changes in the website you changed).

The first time you open FireFTP you will also be presented with the homepage of FireFTP (which is a webpage and not part of the FTP functionality), it looks like this :

The developer states that you should not donate if you don't want to. The software is absolutely free and he does not wish people to be put off by his suggestion for a donation. So do what you will, it looks like a pretty fantastic cause to me. Donate if you wish to, otherwise read what you will an close this page, it won't appear again when you open FireFTP.

Sending a file to your server

We will now look at putting one of your files online. First of all you will need the details of your server. Specifically you need to know :

• Host - the domain name or IP address of your web server
  
• Username (also called 'Login') - the username for the account on the server
  
• Password - the password for the account
  

We are going to go through this excercise with the assumption that you don't have any security on your FTP account. This is the way most FTP accounts are set up, if you are unsure of the situation with your webserver FTP access then contact the person that created the account for you. The first thing you need to do is store these details in FireFTP so you can access the webserver quickly (assuming you want to use FTP frequently with the same server, otherwise you use the 'Quick Connect' function located under the 'Manage Accounts' menu item). To store the details click on the 'Create Account' button :

The 'Create an Account' button only appears the first time you set up an account on FireFTP. After this the button turns into a drop down menu where you can quickly access your accounts (you would then create a new account via the 'Manage Accounts' menu item and choose 'New...'). When you have clicked on 'Create an account' button you will see a new window pop up with a lot of empty fields.

Its here where we enter all the details for our account on our webserver. I will make some details up for this example, lets use the following information :

• Host : www.flossmanuals.net
• Login : mrfloss
• Password : letmein

These details are fake but they will do for the purposes of showing you what information goes where. So now I would enter the information into the corresponding empty fields. The only field we don't have information for is the first one 'Account name', but we can enter the other information.

What you see in the above is that FireFTP copies the information you input in the 'Host' field into the 'Account Name'. The Account Name is nothing more than a name of this webserver account so we can remeber it when using FireFTP (you can choose it from a drop down menu if you ahve multiple webserver accounts stored). This is handy, but perhaps we want to give it another name we can replace the information, lets do this - I'm going to call the account 'fm' :

 

Now we can end the set up by pressing OK

Now nothing will really appear to have changed in the FireFTP window but if we look closely we can see that the 'Create an account' button has now changed its appearance and has instead the name of the account you just created ('fm' in the example above):

If you click on this item you will get a drop down menu where you can select from the accounts you have stored here. Since we only have one account so far we will only see one offered, we just scroll down and choose that account:

 

Connecting

Once the account is selected we just press Connect and FireFTP will attempt to make a connection with your server.

There is very little feedback that this is happening but if you look closely you will see at the bottom of the window there is a progress bar (bottom right) :

and there is also a 'Connecting' text as shown above.

When the application has connected you will see the right side of the FireFTP window display the files on your webserver :

The window on the left shows the files on your computer, the right shows the files on webserver. To navigate through either you must click on the folder icons. Practice this a bit to find the files you want to transfer (on your computer) and the place where you want to transfer the files to on the server.

Transferring files 

Now to transfer a file to the webserver you first need to select it on the left window. 

 

In the above example I have chosen to upload the file 'sqs2.jpg' to the server. I have clicked on the file to choose it for transfer, now I press the green arrow pointing to the right :

When I have done this I once again see some feedback at the bottom right of the window:

This tells me there is a file being transfered. When the progress bar stops I should see the file on the right hand side listing my webserver files.

Thats it. You have transferred your first files from your computer to a webserver using FireFTP. You can also transfer entire directories (by highlighting a directory instead of a file) or multiple files (by clicking on many files to highlight them). Additionally if you highlight files or folders on webserver you can then click on the green arrow pointing top the left to tarsnfer them to your computer.