Fire Up - A Community Project

I must say it really look nice Afterglow.. Which I had the coding skills but me and code are like hm well let's say it like this.. we don't get along very much :)

Seems scary to me, how am I going to know what folder it went into ... The root folder in your sample is rarely where something is being uploaded too, would I have to have settings for each directory I might want to upload to ... ? bleh.

Tai

Great idea, but...

#1: Nothing should ever exist solely in a contextual menu. Evaaar. To make me not hate this, you'll need to make it appear in the File menu as well.

In the prefpane, "Initial Path" should really just be "Path", don't ya think? "Initial" would imply that you would be changing from it later, but that's clearly not the point of this app. :) There's also no place to name the location.

A menu item called "Fire Up to" doesn't make much sense at all, other than for the purposes of product branding, which I always feel shareware developers should rise above for the benefit of the user. Terrible name for a function, really. "Upload to" would work fine, I think. In addition, the menu icon is unnecessary, meaningless branding again.

Why have that ugly-weird-transparent status indicator? The Finder already has a very standard way of handling such information. Try duplicating a large file or emptying a very full Trash to see it. I recommend copying designs the user is already familiar with before creating newer, extremely different ones. This kinda thing isn't the place to try to impress people. Try to blend into the user's expectations as much as possible.

Why is there a close box on the status indicator? A cancel button, perhaps, but surely not a close box. And what is the connection between a traffic light and the transfer status? "Go/Stop" does not translate well into "transferring/done" unless it's used to start and stop the transfer.

Looking the way this does, I'll stick to my FTP apps (Transmit, and more recently CyberDuck). But if it could be cleaned up a bit, I might find it a very handy (although not absolutely essential [I wouldn't pay much for it]) tool.

Why not try this - havn´t tested it:

http://www.waxpraxis.org/coding/17/

Here´s the code from that URL:

on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving these_items
set ftpSite to "ftp://www.yoursite.com/upload/"
set ftpUser to "username"
set ftpPass to "password"

repeat with i from 1 to number of items in these_items
set this_item to item i of these_items
set done to simpleFtpUpload(ftpSite, this_item, ftpUser, ftpPass)
tell application "Finder"
set item_name to the name of this_item
end tell
display dialog item_name & " has been uploaded." buttons {"OK"} default button 1
end repeat
end adding folder items to

on simpleFtpUpload(remoteURL, localFile, userName, userPasswd)
-- version 1.2, Dan Shockley (http://www.danshockley.com)
-- uses curl to do the upload
-- remoteURL is the complete ftp url to the remote destination directory
try
set {od, AppleScript's text item delimiters} to {AppleScript's text item delimiters, ":"}
set parentFolder to (text items 1 thru -2 of (localFile as string)) as string
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to od

set localPosixPath to quoted form of POSIX path of localFile
set uploadFileName to do shell script "basename " & localPosixPath
set uploadDirectory to quoted form of POSIX path of parentFolder

-- curl --upload-file SOMEFILE ftp://SERVER.com --user MYUSER:THEPASSWD
-- must be IN the directory of the file you want to upload
set myCommand to "cd " & uploadDirectory & ";" & "curl --upload-file "
set myCommand to myCommand & quoted form of uploadFileName
set myCommand to myCommand & " " & remoteURL
set myCommand to myCommand & " --user " & userName & ":" & userPasswd
set myCommand to myCommand & " " & "--write-out " & "%{size_upload}"
set myCommand to myCommand & " --quote -quit"

-- output is the 'size_upload' result from curl

set uploadResult to do shell script myCommand

return uploadResult -- size uploaded in kilobytes
on error errmsg number errNum
error "simpleFtpUpload FAILED: " & errmsg number errNum
end try
end simpleFtpUpload

I've long wanted a solution such as this. I currently use StuffIt Deluxe's Stuffit Express to create hot folders that upload any file dropped on them to specific directories on an FTP site – they are just little applications that you can add "events" to. Mine currently also send an email to the person I want to know that the file has been uploaded.

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I like the concept...but I just spent money on Transmit. I find transmit's "edit" tools a perfect compliment to working with dreamweaver. I can understand this shortcut though, It'd be a nice combo to have transmit and this idea together.

Speaking of FTP.. Why can you download from an FTP site via OSX's finder, but you can't upload to it?

The program could reside in the menu bar as well. You click it's icon (it could just be a little black rocket ship) and it has a little window pop out of your folders that you've set it up to work with. Then you just drag and drop your file right into there.

I have a script set up that let's me just drag items to an icon and it drop uploads them to a website, and it's all done using applescript and bash scripting via SFTP. If you want details holla back. It's missing 1) the slick progress bar and 2) menu based configuration (you have to edit the applescript per site). But since I only use three or four sites, I find it saves me a lot of steps per upload.

For those of you with the latest version of Transmit check out the Docksend feature.

With DockSend enabled, you can drag any file or folder (or multiple items) from the Finder to Transmit's dock icon. If the file you drag in comes from the local path associated with a DockSend-enabled favorite, Transmit automatically connects to that favorite and uploads it.

Better still, DockSend is smart enough to know about subfolders. So, if you drag in something like gfx/headers/new.gif, Transmit will navigate on the server into gfx, then headers, before uploading new.gif. It'll even create intermediate folders that don't exist yet.

http://stevenf.com/mt/archives/2005/02/using_docksend.php

What you described can be done with Automator in Mac OS X Tiger. (except maybe without the eye candy). All you have to do is set-up a workflow... and Automator workflows are accessible from the context menu.

I have to say though, I haven't seen too many apps that can modify Finder's context menus. In Windows, it's fairly simple to add an app to a context menu, but on OS X you need haxies or some such.

I think your idea is interesting, but it seems to only do one thing: Upload files. What if you need to download? How would that be accomplished? What about other FTP functions like changing permissions?

I have the feeling the folks at Panic would look at this thread and say, "Yep, we tried that and here's why we didn't incorporate it...."

While I applaud your effort, this is not something I would use. I'm quite happy with Transmit.

It's just a quick way to upload stuff. Much like the genious ImageWell, but with less features.

Regarding Fire Up the author of ImageWell from XtraLean software said:
"From a technical perspective, ImageWell uses curl to transfer files which has proven to be a nice little unix utility to send files. I don't know much about contextual menus so I can't comment on that aspect of the coding... From what I understand about adding a contextual menu to the Finder, this is something that is not supported by Apple - it's a like a FruitMenu thing from Unsanity. It might be easy to make this app, but the real cost is supporting it if an Apple OS update breaks it."

great idea, if the drop window reside in our desktop, can i do some directory browsing in the server?...

i sugest directory browsing alternatives like this flash site www.relevare.com ... think in drop files on it...

saludos