Introduction

1.1 Introduction

Over the lifetime of NetFinder, it has won a few awards and been rated by some organizations with five stars. We are honored by this rating and we hope to live up to it in the future by continually adding features and support all the new technologies that Apple and the internet have to offer in the future.

Please take some time and read this documentation as it is a comprehensive description of all the features in NetFinder and how they are meant to be used. It also has an extensive FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section to assist in common problems.

1.2 Feature List

Supported Protocols

• ftp - File Transfer Protocol
• ftps - File Transfer Protocol with SSL/TLS
• ftpsi - File Transfer Protocol with implicit SSL
• sftp - File Transfer Protocol over SSH
• http - Hyper Text Transfer Protocol - Web Pages
• https - Hyper Text Transfer Protocol with SSL - Web Pages
• webdav - File Transfer over http (works with iDisk and cpanel too)
• webdavs - File Transfer over http with SSL (works with iDisk and cpanel too)
• file - Browse local hard disk

Supported Security Protocols

For ftp protocol:

• SecurID friendly.
• PASV connection support.
• FTP proxy (this is not the same as HTTP proxy).
• s/key, OTP (One Time Password). Auto detect and login. Supports code and word based passwords.
• SOCKS v4 and v5 (v5 support is limited). Microsoft Proxy 2.0 users will require the latest service pack.
• FTP through a HTTP Proxy. Only a limited number of HTTP proxies are supported.

• These protocols are designed to provide secure communications.

• This protocol always has secure communications.
• Kerberos support - saves you remembering a password without using the Keychain Manager.

• Basic HTTP Authentication.
• HTTP through a Proxy Server.
• Secure communication via SSL (https)

• Basic HTTP Authentication.
• HTTP through a Proxy Server.
• Secure communication via SSL (webdavs)

OSX Technology Adoption

• Fully Cocoa Interface, ready to integrate the latest Technologies from Apple.
• QuickLook - View files the Leopard (OSX 10.5) way, preview, slideshow, full screen and more.
• CodeSigning - Ensures the integrity of the application from viruses. (10.5 and higher)
• Spotlight - Locate NetFinder bookmarks quickly and easily no matter where they are on your Hard Disk.
• Services Menu - Enabling NetFinder to better interoperate with fellow applications. eg Mail.app
• Contextual Menu Plugin - Allowing the Finder and NetFinder to work seamlessly together.
• Automator - make complex task simple, a mouse click away.
• iDisk/.Mac access - connect seamlessly to your iDisk account without even having to enter a password.
• Keychain - for secure storage and retrieval of account details.
• Security Frameworks - view certificate information to give you peace of mind.
• Drag and Drop everywhere - even we forget what we can do.
• QuickTime - view rich media with a single keystroke.
• WebKit - gorgeous mirroring reports
• AppleScript - control NetFinder like a Power User.
• Speech Manager - hear a notification when tasks are done.
• Address Book - organize things better, and still integrate well with other applications.
• Bonjour - saves you remembering server addresses, they just appear for you to connect to.

Basic Features

• Universal Binary
• Long filename support
• Unicode Support - supports filenames for any language, English, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Arabic...
• Ability to handle large file transfers, files greater than 4GB in size.
• Resume uploading and resume downloading of files.

Available in Multiple Languages

• English
• Japanese (日本語)
• French (Français)
• German (Deutsch)

Useful Features

• File management - create new file/folders, rename, move, upload, download, delete, set permissions, etc
• Ability to duplicate files/folders on a remote server.
• Metadata for everything - label and comment everything, including remote server objects. (Brought to you first by NetFinder)
• Undo - undo a rename, move and more for actions performed on remote server listings. (Brought to you first by NetFinder)
• Multi-window, hierarchical listing windows for remote servers - like the Finder. (Brought to you first by NetFinder... many year ago.)
• Remembered window position and size for remote listing windows. (Brought to you first by NetFinder... many year ago.)
• Automatically restore the session state from when you last quit NetFinder - a feature seen in more and more applications.
• Advanced Bookmarking capabilities - organize in a hierarchy, label, comments
• Search/filter your files in any window instantly - including saving your favorite searches
• Visually filter listing windows hierarchically. (Brought to you first by NetFinder)
• Get Info - file/folder size, date, permissions, label, comments
• Previewing remote files of any type - text, photos (with detailed camera setting information), PDF's, HTML, movies, mp3.

Advanced Features

• Advanced mirroring/syncing - mirror up, mirror down, mirror both ways (merge) - a perfect companion for iWeb.
• Mirroring Simulation Run
• Dynamic self contained filterable mirror reports. (Brought to you first by NetFinder)

• NetFinder Automation Components - apply an automation to a selection of files/folders on a remote server in one simple step. (Brought to you first by NetFinder)

  Pre-installed components include:

  • Create thumbnail folder for selection of photos/images
  • Scale selected photos/images and replace originals
  • Create PDF summary of selected images/photos (back onto the server or onto your Desktop)
  • Compress remote selection as zip, tar.gz or tar.bz2
  • Encode/Decode selection using binhex, uu, base64, MacBinary
  • the possibilities are endless!
• Define your own automation components easily using Apple Automator.app

• Ability to edit remote files in an editor of your choosing.
• Open in Terminal - quickly connect via ssh to a specific folder on a server.
• Auto-upload droplets - mini-applications that upload to a server whatever is dropped onto them.

Power User Features

• AppleScript support
• ICI script support
• RubyCocoa script support
• Script and Executable based NetFinder Automation Components
• Customizable Sound/Speech feedback.

Miscellaneous Features - User Interface

• Listing windows have multiple columns of information like name, size, kind, modify date, owner, group, permissions etc.
• User configurable columns of information, thus allowing you to hide and show columns of data. NetFinder even remembers when you next open the window, even after you relaunch NetFinder.
• Support for setting the display font and font size. With a handy resize dial in every listing window.
• Option to turn off multiple window listing and just show listings in one window.
• Filter listing with regexp (Regular Expressions)
• Recent Places Menu - easy access to recently opened bookmarks, sites and directories at sites.
• Hostname/server completion - type in the first few characters of a recently visited site and have the rest of the server name be filled in.
• Easily copy the full URL's of selected items in a listing window. Something useful which NetFinder supported years before anyone else.

Miscellaneous Features - Non User Interface

• Secure storage/retrieval of username/password from the Keychain manager, with the option not to store it, the decision is yours to make.
• Retry Busy Servers - so you can go away and do something else rather than waiting around.
• Directory list caching - to make listing rarely changing sites really fast to access.
• Support for VMS servers using FTP.
• Server Parser Plugins - allows for easy extensibility of NetFinder to support FTP servers with non-standard listings.
• Support for on-the-fly encoding and decoding of MacBinary files when uploading and downloading.
• Ability to configure per site PORT/PASV settings.
• Ability to configure per site filename encoding settings.
• Ability to configure per site GMT offset settings.
• Ability to make NetFinder the default FTP/SFTP application - clicking on ftp:// and sftp:// URL's will be directed to NetFinder.
• Speech and Sound notifications when you connect, disconnect, upload, download, delete, abort etc - configurable for power users
• Growl notifications
• Ability to configure regexp based filename exclusion filters for file transfers and mirroring.

3rd Party Technology Adoption

• Growl Notifications
• RubyCocoa Script Integration
• ICI Script Integration
• External Editor Protocol
• Sparkle Updates Framework

1.3 Explanation of Terms

• The term "directory" means the same thing as "folder". "Folder" tends to be used on Mac disks and "directory" on remote sites or the PC world.
• URL is Uniform Resource Location. It's the standard way to refer to any data or media on the internet. For example, for FTP files and directories, URLs typically begin with "ftp://".
• "Hostname", "Server", "Remote Server", "Remote Site", "FTP site" and "FTP server" are used synonymously to refer to the machine which you connect to and then perform operations on/with. For example, "deleting a file from the server" and "deleting a file from the FTP site" both mean deleting a file which resides on the FTP server's disk drive.
• "command key shortcut" and "keyboard shortcut" mean the same thing.
• On your keyboard, "command" key is the same as "apple" key (or that key with the icon like a "propellar")
• On your keyboard, "option" key is the same as "alt" key