14 DAY TRIAL // The number of FTP clients has incredibly increased in the last years. You can see FTP capabilities included in many browsers, especially in those with an open source.
One does not need to be a rocket scientist to know how to implement such a feature into another software or to make a stand alone FTP client. I can't personally say that I have such knowledge, but then again, I am not that good of a programmer in the first place. As the competition is high, the success of such a product will be based on how the developer manages to implement key features, features that a FTP client should have, in a user-friendly environment. David V. Kocher, CyberDuck's "daddy", managed to do so.
The problem with everything that is on the market is that it is either too complicated or very simple and lacks many features that some might miss when using them.
The standalone FTP clients for example, offer more features and require more configurations than an inexperienced user can handle. Those users tend to get "scared" of it and stop using it. On the other hand, those incorporated in other softwares as a feature do not offer enough for the mid-level users, not to mention the high-end one, and they have to install a stand-alone version anyway.
Cyberduck gives everyone what they need. It gives the possibility for the low-end users to use it for their simple needs in a relaxed and easy way without any supplementary configurations, while the more advanced ones can "dig up" the extra menus for a more customized connection and transfer.
Working with it:
The simple way:
At first launch, you see a drop-down menu called "Quick launch". That is as simple as it can be. You just enter the host's address and CyberDuck will try to connect to it with an anonymous account, that being the most commonly used, and with standard settings. An inexperienced user can find, at first, in the toolbar all the features he might need: quick connect, open connections, refresh, disconnect and a cool bookmarks menu. The bookmark menu is a very simple way for anyone to store the connection settings from every server and eventually edit them. The bookmarks are exportable by dragging-and-dropping, feature used for uploading files to. The downloading part is done by double clicking on a file. The transfer window offers the possibility of interacting with every file transfer that is running. Cyberduck not only supports more connections at a time, but also downloading and uploading at the same time; feature that many other FTP clients lack.
Digging up? (not too much though):
The protocols supported by Cyberduck are: FTP (File Transfer Protocol), FTP/TLS (FTP secured over SSL/TLS) and SFTP (SSH Secure File Transfer).
While an FTP connection requires no special settings in most cases, the other types of protocols require at least mid-level experience.
Well? when it comes to mid-level and professional usage Cyberduck offers everything one might need: - External editors can be configured so that they would be seamless integrated. Cyberduck supports: SubEthaEdit, BBEdit, TextWrangler, Text-Edit Plus, TextMate - mi, Smultron - JeditX, CSSEdit - CotEditor and Tag; - Full AppleScripts integration. Many sample scripts can be found on the disk image; - ASCII transfers, that would allow you to easily convert line endings; - Synchronization. Now this one is a nice one. You can synchronize local with remote directories (and vice versa) and get a preview of affected files before any action is taken. Nice touch, I might add. - Public key authentication, Keyboard Interactive (PAM) Authentication, support for various encryption ciphers (3DES, Blowfish, Twofish, AES, CAST) and Authentication algorithms (MD5, SHA1) are some features that many professionals could not do without and they are fully supported. - The permissions are not only modifiable but they can be applied on multiple files.
Opinion:
Cyberduck looks exactly as such a program should. It is simple, easy to set up, clean and well organized, with a nice-to-look-at design, while maintaining a user-friendly environment. What makes it better than others is the developer's attention for detail.
For example, the bookmark menu that slides out from the sides when opened. This menu slides according to the main window's position on the screen. Also, the simple settings of the toolbar and standard configurations for most users are a nice touch. The developer certainly did not forget where he left from, and made this software for those that do not have that much experience in the field, while keeping in mind that features for the professional ones also need to be added.
Also, the Cyberduck widget is a really nice addition. That really makes a simple transfer as easy as it can possibly be. The settings are minimal and you just drag the files you need to upload into the widget.
The Good
Not only is it absolutely free but it is also an open source, thing that gives any experienced user the possibility to modify the program to his needs or talk to the developer about what one might think should be changed or added as the developer communicates with users trough its forum and updates CyberDuck monthly.
The Bad
As anything built from the ground up, CyberDuck has had some bugs and lacked many of the features that are included now but this is being fixed constantly. The thing I would like to see in a future release would only have to be the possibility to manage the files in a twin-window interface. Also, it uses quite some resources and can be annoying if used frequently. This part could use a little work, too.
The Truth
Cyberduck does exactly what such an application should do. There is nothing more practical than this one and there is nothing more or less you could ask from it. It does its job in a professional way with no headache at all.
Click below to view some printscreens:
