The Smorgasbord of Douglas Bell

If you’re like me, and you make a living as a web developer, you rely on FTP clients. Ah, yes, these programs whose sole purpose it is to connect to a server and allow you to copy files between it and your desktop. Seems easy, right? Turns out it’s anything but.

Problem #1 is that the Mac OS X Finder does not support FTP, hence demonstrating the need for a client. But even if the Finder did, it would not be adequate. People who really use FTP clients aren’t merely managing files that they’ve created on their computer; they’re uploading files to the server from their computer and downloading files from the server to their computer. En masse. (There’s a reason it’s called “File Transfer Protocol,” after all.) The Mac Finder simply does not give you what you need to make that work efficiently, even if it did support FTP.

The long-time king of Mac FTP clients has been Panic’s Transmit, which I’m pretty sure was the first FTP client to implement the two-column browser, implementing a blatantly obvious label of “your stuff” versus “their stuff” to differentiate them. No longer was it necessary to have multiple windows to find your files or have to drag them on- and off-screen.

The problem was that the Panic folks let a lot of time lapse between versions. Transmit 3.0, a major improvement to their software, was released in February 2005 amidst much fanfare and many awards… and then sat there for over five years. Other Mac FTP clients with snazzier interfaces and newer features emerged over time. Even I switched earlier this year to Flow when I got it as part of the last MacHeist bundle. (The MacHeist Bundle page for Flow took direct jabs at the staleness of Transmit 3, declaring “1998 called, it wants its file transfer app back.”)

About two months ago, Panic finally roared back onto the scene with the release of Transmit 4. Boy, did they make up for lost time! This new release of Transmit is packed with features and refinements that launch it at least five years ahead of any other FTP client out there today.

The most obvious new feature in Transmit 4 is its completely redesigned user interface. Much like comparing the iPhone 4 to the iPhone 3GS, Transmit 4′s interface makes Transmit 3 look downright clunky in comparison. The two-column “your stuff”/”their stuff” view is still there, though the names have been replaced by a new white vs. black color scheme that clearly differentiates the two sides. But the line between the two has been blurred dramatically. Transmit now includes a toolbar button that lets you switch into a single-column view if you prefer, and each column has a little icon in the upper-right that lets you switch the column from a “your stuff” view into a “their stuff” view. Which means you can now use Transmit in completely new ways, such as transferring files between two folders on your own hard drive, or transferring files from one FTP server directly to another. (The server->server transfer really does work, but it’s kind of slow because it probably has to cache the files on your hard drive first. But it’s nice flexibility to have.)

Transmit includes built-in support for FTP, SFTP, Amazon S3, and WebDAV directory access, not to mention browsing the files on your own computer. It also has built-in MobileMe support and can connect to your iDisk or another user’s iDisk, and can also connect to network systems using Bonjour. Managing favorites also includes a much-improved interface that lets you set a favorite icon for your sites if you wish. Plus you can identify one of your favorites to automatically upload files to if you drop files on the Transmit Dock icon using the “DockSend” feature, or even save your favorites as a droplet. This creates a “mini-application” on your computer that you can drop files onto, which will automatically upload them. These features are great if you’re frequently uploading files to the same location on a server.

Browsing files is easier than ever in Transmit 4, thanks to its complete support for the browsing features Mac users are used to. All four views that the Finder uses (icon view, list view, column view, and even cover flow view) is fully supported in Transmit 4, and you can switch between them with the toolbar icon. (I personally prefer list view, so I can view the size and date of each item.) Transmit even has full support for Quick Look–even when you’re previewing directly from an FTP server! No need to download the file first. And when you’re navigating, Transmit shows you the path of directories you’ve opened as breadcrumbs along the top–a single click on any of the directories instantly jumps you back there. It’s much more efficient than using a pop-up menu to backtrace, but a pop-up menu is also available if you wish by clicking on the name of the current (highlighted) directory. And at the upper-left of each column, Transmit 4 has a feature called “Places.” Essentially, this lets you specify your most frequently-accessed directories on a server (or on your local hard drive) as a “place.” Then, just click the Places icon in the upper-left (or Shift-Command-S) and a translucent view fades in, giving you single-click or drag-and-drop access to each of your Places.

Transmit has long had a Synchronize feature that allowed you to synchronize the two directories that showed up in both columns so that they matched each other. Transmit 4 greatly enhances this feature and makes it a lot less scary. When you click on the Sync button in the toolbar, a pane slides down allowing you to specify the direction of the sync and optionally control a number of the rules that determine the sync. You can even simulate the sync if you want to make sure that you’re not going to lose anything sensitive, and a nice blue thought bubble explains exactly what you’re about to do before you do it. Nice feature.

And that’s just looking at how you browse the user interface of the application–Transmit does a fantastic job of actually transferring the files. Panic’s website claims that Transmit 4 is up to 25 times faster than Transmit 3. Of course, a lot of that depends on how fast your internet connection is and how fast the server on the other end is; personally I can’t wait to see how fast this baby screams when I upload a file from the faster internet connection at my university. Also, part of the reason that Transmit 4 is so much faster is because it tries to establish multiple connections to the FTP server so it can upload multiple files at once. This won’t work with every server; my old web host locked me out of my account because I had so many FTP connections at once. My new web host seems to be better able to handle the load. Even so, Transmit is definitely noticeably faster at uploading files–especially large numbers of small files–than its predecessor. It also has a great interface for monitoring uploads. Not only does it have a unique kind of progress bar–which uses different opacities of progress to show the overall progress and the progress for just the current file on the same bar–but it has a nice queue that you can slide up by clicking on the arrow in the lower-left of the window. It’s a very tight and intuitive interface that is leaps and bounds ahead of the old floating Activity window.

Transmit 4 also includes a novelty feature (it’s “One More Thing…”) called Transmit Disk. This feature actually allows you to mount a remote FTP server on your desktop as though it were an external hard drive, and browse it in the Finder. It’s a really interesting feature, but in my limited use it seemed to feel a little quirky. I had some initial difficulty getting files that I saved in the Transmit Disk to upload to the server, and not having the visual indicators that I’d come to love in the Transmit application made me treat the Transmit Disk as though it was a piece of delicate, fine china than just another disk. Plus, I kind of found that for my purposes, I preferred working within Transmit’s interface, or else editing files directly from the server using Panic’s integrated Coda application, over working from within the Finder. Quite frankly, I consider Transmit Disk to be more of a novelty extra, not part of Transmit’s core reason for being.

But overall, Transmit 4 is a must-have upgrade for anyone who lives in FTP, the way I do. The masterful integration of features, functionality, polish, and raw file transfer power make Transmit hands-down the best FTP client out there, and arguably one of the best Mac apps ever designed. Apple could not produce a better FTP app themselves if they tried.

In terms of my use going forward, I’m going to be using Transmit alongside Coda, which I reviewed three years ago. Coda will be my app of choice when I want to make edits directly to files on an FTP server, and Transmit will be my app of choice when I’m in the market for transferring big bulks of files around.

But seriously, if you transfer files around regularly and use a Mac, give Transmit 4 a try. I got hooked on it within the first minute of using it, and I’m sure you will too. Transmit 4 costs $34, but believe me, it pays for itself. An upgrade from Transmit 3 costs $19.