8 Improvements/Perspective of WSFTP User

[chuckmeister]

Although FileZilla is a superior program to WSFTP in many ways, for
the meantime I'm going to stick with WSFTP for a while. However,
FileZilla shows so much merit that I thought I should take the time
to point these issues out to you:

1. I wish FileZilla would show me somewhere on the screen what remote system I'm connected to. For example, WSFTP's top bar says, "WSFTP95 LE ftp.WhereYouAre.Com" The "ftp.WhereYouAre.Com" is very useful information for people who sign onto multiple similar systems. And this is even more critical when multiple systems are logged onto simultaneously. FileZilla's top bar says "FileZilla version 1.9.4". I looked high & low, but I don't see anywhere that it tells which system that I'm currently FTPing to. And so if I'm logged onto 2-3 systems, just to be safe, I have to close all copies of FileZilla & then reinitiate each window -- else I risk doing the wrong thing on the wrong system. This would not be necessary if the program would simply tell me which system that this particular window is connected to. It doesn't seem that "expensive" to make this change -- at least to print it on the screen somewhere. And it is critical for people who use lots of systems, so I thought I'd make it number 1.
2. Note that the "top bar" text also appears in the small box of the "task bar" at the bottom of the screen when FileZilla is minimized. However, "1.9.4" may never appear in the small block at the bottom of the screen because the word "version" takes up that space, but is of less use than the actual version "1.9.4". So at the least, I'd suggest you remove the word "version" which would move "1.9.4" over to the left. Note that depending on the resolution of the monitor, and the size of the fonts, and the number of windows open, the "1.9.4" may never have a chance to appear at all. That said, it would be even better (I think) to put the host name or FTP address on the top bar, such as "FileZilla Ftp.WhereYouAre.Com". Because that way if you have 2-3 copies of FileZilla opened, you can see on the task bar which one to click on to open it and/or bring it to the front. At any rate, as stated in #1 above, I think it would be safer if the site connected to appeared "somewhere" on the screen.
3. I wish the program would save the width of the columns that the user chose. That way columns wouldn't need to be resized each time FileZilla is started. Keeping in mind that some people have chosen large fonts, or they may commonly work with long file names, or files that are "100,000,000" bytes vs "100" bytes. That way they can size the columns to the widths of their liking and they won't have to resize these columns each time they fire up FileZilla.
4. A lower priority would be to let the user choose the font displayed in the "details" window. For directories, I prefer a fixed width Font, such as Courier. On a similar note, if the "month" and "day" were zero filled, they would line up like soldiers & be easier to debug in the "details" window. Because when a variable width font is used, "I" is narrower than "M" in the file column. And for months, January "1" takes up less space than December "12" in that column.
5. I do miss the ability to click on the left and right arrows of WSFTP, keeping in mind that I'm converting from that program. In other words, after highlighting the file(s) to copy, I clicked on the left arrow when I was copying from a remote system to my local Windows PC. And I clicked on the right arrow when doing the opposite.
6. I also miss the ascii, binary & auto radio buttons which appeared on the main screen, as opposed to the Settings/Connection/ASCII-Binary dialog box to do that.
7. I also miss WSFTP's ability to "view" an ascii file on the remote system by double-clicking on it (note this required a config change, which was dangerous if not done on all PCs I use because simple double-clicking on it would just copy the file from the Win PC to the FTP system, or vice-versa. However, with FileZilla, on a "local" file, I can right-click on it & choose "open".
8. However, clicking on right-click, then "open" launches the application rather than viewing the file. So for example, if you click on a .html file, it will launch your browser, rather than view it. So since there is no way to view it, what I do is change the file name to end with .txt, then view it. Then when I'm all done, I (dangerously) try to remember to remove the .txt file to change it back the way it was. When all I really wanted to do was view the file in notepad.exe.

Thanks for taking the time to listen. I know it sounds like what I want
is WSFTP, but I'm in the process of leaving all "pay" software behind.
And FileZilla looks like it has the most merit by far. It's hard to believe
that it all fits in 1.1mb.

[Tim Kosse]

FileZilla version 1.9.8 displays the server you are connected
to in it's titlebar.

[anonymous]

Logged In: NO

I am now using filezilla over wsftp. I DO miss the ability to
double click to run the editor of my choice ansd well as the
clicking of arrows to do the get/put

[Alexander Schuch]

Please do report only ONE feature request per item, thanks!

1) Not yet implemented in FileZilla 3 (beta).

2) FileZilla 3 (beta) only shows the term "FileZilla" in the task bar or at the application top bar, so nothing is cut at all.

3) See FileZilla 3 bug reports:
[ 1676329 ] UI: settings not saved

4) Font selection is not implemented yet either.

5) See the following RFE:
[ 897954 ] upload/download buttons with arrows

6) Why would one need to change ASCII/binary transfer mode on the fly? Setting up the auto-mode properly once should be enough for most of the time.

7) As far as I know, this is implemented into FileZilla 2 already, but not yet present in FileZilla 3 (beta).

8) This is not implemented either.