Mac OS X Lion: The Missing Manual

FTP

FTP (file transfer protocol) sites store pieces of software that can be accessed from the Internet. If you’ve heard of FTP at all, it was probably under one of two circumstances—either you’ve downloaded software from an Internet FTP site, or you’ve created and maintained your own Web site.

Uploading and Downloading from FTP Sites

Hooking into an FTP site generally requires an FTP client program that runs on the kind of computer you use (Mac, Windows, or whatever). On Mac OS X, popular FTP client programs include the shareware programs Transmit, Fetch, Interarchy, and Captain FTP, and the free RBrowser (which is available from the “Missing CD” page.

Using these programs, Web designers, for example, can view a list of all the text and graphics documents, sitting there on an Internet-connected computer somewhere, that make up their Web pages. The effect is shown in Figure 21-3.

When they want to update one of those pages, they add it to this list; to delete a Web page, they remove it from this list.

Just Downloading from FTP Sites

If you’re just going to look at and download files (but not upload or delete any), you don’t even need a special FTP program. You can get to the files much more directly using one of these two methods:

• Any old Web browser will work. Open Safari, for example, and type ftp://ftp.apple.com (or whatever the address is) into the address bar. A dialog box asks for an account name and password, if they’re required. Once you’re in, you switch to the Finder and see the ...