Orlando Florida Web Master Jerald Huff

My Mac FTP Client


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My Mac FTP Client

Being a web developer, I find a lot of my time spent in some very key apps like text editors, web browsers and of course FTP Clients. For the longest time I had been using FileZilla and it worked fine for a while until I began to wonder if there was a software that would integrate with my system better and allow me to connect through Web Dav and Amazon S3 servers. After a while of research I came across this awesome program called Transmit by Panic.

Transmit is a pretty nifty app because it integrates well with Finder and has a couple of cool features like Disks, which is a way to mount a web server onto your Mac like it’s an external drive. You can view and access all your files and drag and drop files to your server as if to a flash drive. You can also view and edit the files from your computer, and upon save have the changes written automatically. Although, keeping a backup is always a good thing, but it’s awesome for making quick changes.

Transmit Disks
Disks Running On My MacBook

In addition to disks, I like having features like linked folder browsing. If you have a site entirely downloaded in a directory on your computer and the file and folder structure is the same as on your server, you can link the navigation so that as you move through directories on your server, it also moves them through your finder.

Folder Linking
Linked Folder Browsing Works Without All Directories Downloaded

However, aside from the good things that it does do, where it really excels over Filezilla is I can change the default actions of what the double click function does. Instead of it always transferring files to and from my server, I have it setup to open the file in my text editor by default.

Another good selling point for me was the syncing feature that allows me to sync my local directory to the server or sync the server to my local directory. It also lets you simulate the sync telling you what is going to happen before you commit. It basically just makes sure all files and folders in one spot match those in another.

In finder I really enjoy being able to press the spacebar on a selected file and seeing a preview of it. This can also be achieved in Transmit by selecting the file and hitting the spacebar.

Quick View
Quick view of a text file on my server

Aside from all it’s good points, there are only a few things that I find irritating. For starters, I can’t download all the folders above a file the way Dreamweaver can. For instance, in Dreamweaver I may want my functions.php file in my theme. Normally, Dreamweaver will download the functions.php file as well as the directories it’s contained in. Transmit nor FileZilla do this. Transmit also has slow refresh rates. Waiting to see all the files and folders on some of my sites can take some time. However, if you haven’t used it, download it and try the trial of the software to see if it’s a fitting client for you! It has been great features that I think out weight some of it’s faults.

Terminal Based Pandora

I found myself, for the longest time, switching between streaming Pandora off of my phone to my Mac through line in as opposed to in browser on my computer. As crazy as that sounds, it was one of the few ways I could save resources on my Mac and not burn half of my CPU to a “Chrome Helper” service running on my Mac. I constantly wondered if there was a native Mac client that would let me play Pandora without the need of Flash and all of my CPU’s resources. Luckily, after looking around, I found a few alternatives I would like to share with my followers…

3. Hermes

This was one of the best alternatives I could find that had an interface and was free! You can use all the normal functionality of Pandora right from this app. After using it for a while though, I was not impressed with the sound quality. I felt like it was lacking and quickly moved away. You can download it here for free: http://hermesapp.org/.

2. Muse

Not only better looking and equipped with more functionality, Muse is a great app for people in love with Pandora who want the best possible experience when listening to there music. Get notified of song changes, use native OS X keyboard commands, a sleek interface all in one $5 package. Get muse in the app store or find it online here: https://industriousone.com/.

1. Pianobar

Personally, my favorite of the 3 apps, comes at number with the lowest foot print on my system. Pianobar is a terminal based Pandora client that uses little resources without sacrificing performance and sound quality, yet lacking a normal graphical user interface (GUI). Getting the app to install is pretty easy, and if your already comfortable with Terminal commands, give it a shot now! You’ll need Homebrew. For Mavericks users, just run this in terminal

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/go/install)"

It will ask you for your password, so go ahead and punch it in and proceed. After installation, run this command

brew doctor

You should see a “Your system is ready to brew dialog.” Next type

brew search pianobar

If it finds the package go ahead and run

brew install pianobar

After it gets all its required packages installed and PianoBar itself is installed, you can run it by running this command in a new Terminal window

pianobar

From here it will ask for your email and password to sign into Pandora. Once you have logged in, type in the number next to the channel you want to listen to. After you have activated the channel… you can at any time press “?” key to see a list of all commands. The basics are “s” for switch channel, “n” for next track. Generally thats all I use. Here is a screen shot of the awesome app running right off of my mac!

Terminal Based Pandora Player


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