Hard as it is to believe, FTP has been around for almost four decades—predating pretty much the entire staff of MacUser. Of course, it’s gone through plenty of updates and revisions in that time, but the basic concept remains largely the same.
What has changed is how we interact with FTP: whereas ten or twenty years ago, it would largely have been through typing commands into a green-on-black terminal window, these days we have all sorts of nifty programs that make it as easy as pointing and clicking.
My personal favorite among the bunch, the program I turn to when I need to do some serious file transfer protocol…ing, is Cyberduck, the free (donations accepted) and open source FTP client that’s just hit version 3.0. This newest iteration includes a bunch of new features, such as the ability to connect to WebDAV servers (like your iDisk), support for Amazon’s S3 storage service, bookmark searching, Quick Look support, and a new Activity window. They’ve also tweaked the interface a bit, improving the Bookmark editing interface by getting rid of the pesky old drawer. It’s all looking pret-ty slick.
If you’re a current Cyberduck user, just hit the Check for Updates… menu option. If you haven’t tried Cyberduck before, you’re in for a treat. Just waltz over to their site and download away.
Cyberduck pales in comparison to Transmit. Well worth the modest cost of the Transmit product.
I've been from Transmit to Cyberduck, and finally to Interarchy. Nothing against Cyberduck and Transmit, I just out grew them. Cyberduck and Transmit are great for beginners/low-end users but dragging-and-dropping files to upload can become laborious and error-prone, especially when dealing with large sites. Interarchy's mirroring functions FTW.