FTP Voyager in Cyberspace

You probably already have a FTP program but you'll want to look again when you see FTP Voyager because this baby zooms you into Outer Space!

Installation
FTP Voyager is available as a download from Rhino Software. It is approximately 2 Megabytes in size. It installs gracefully with the splash screen and interface below. Setup allows you a choice of directory locations.

The final steps of installation include a smooth and logical screen for choosing the method you use to connect to the Internet. I chose the "Directly to the Internet or through a Modem or LAN" option. But the program also supports proxy servers, firewall operation, and WinGate proxy services.

The main program icon, seen below, is accompanied by a help icon, and two text file icons (for license information and installation notes) in the start menu.

After setup FTP Voyager will import sites from other FTP applications. I was able to quickly place my WS-FTP setting into it. All that remained to be done was to organize my FTP sites in any convenient manner I chose.

Starting a session
The Site profile Manager appears as soon as you open the program. This manager consists of a window on the left that contains categories in a tree arrangement. The names of the branches are categories you can specify. Then expanding the tree can reveal the FTP sites you decided to group together within that category.

Whenever you click on one of the sites, the entire profile for that site is displayed on the right. The profile consists of Name, Description (if you chose), FTP site address, the default directory on the site you may choose to go to, and the login ID and password. More buttons are found on the extreme right side for connecting, canceling, help, shortcuts to sites, filters, and advanced options. I will discuss the advanced options later.

The screen below is shrunken because it represents the entire interface. I will discuss each part separately in the section that follows, but in this image notice the overall arrangement of the parts. Basically, there is a menubar and toolbar at the top. Below those there are three rows of windows. The top row is a view of the remote site. It consists of a directory tree on the left and a file view on the right. The same arrangement describes the second row, but the second row depicts the local directory structure. The bottom row is designed to provide continuous feedback about the interaction with the server.

The directory tree on the left is a view of the server (at the top) and the local computer's hard disk (at the bottom). These are expandable for easy view and navigation.

Whenever the cursor highlights a limb of a directory tree, the contents of that directory folder are displayed on the window pane to its left. This is seen in the screen shot below. Again, the top window corresponds to the remote server and the bottom corresponds to the local PC.

At the bottom of the main FTP Voyager interface, an optional window displays the feedback window seen below. Note that the commands are in green and the responses are in blue.

This provides continuous and detailed feedback. Notice the menu slide on the right. It makes it possible to backtrack and find out what was transferred and what errors might have occurred.

Toolbars and menus
The general trend in toolbars is for all important operations to be available. FTP Voyager accomplishes this with aplomb. By default there are 18 icons on the toolbar to the right of a window that informs you of your category and chosen site profile. The icons shown below are set up when the program arrives, but these can be modified by adding apparently any menu command to the toolbar in the View Options menu shown later.

Almost every icon performs the same action to files that are local and on the server. The obvious exceptions are the icons for upload and download transfers. But in general, any of the actions you can perform locally, like deleting, can be performed on the server with the same action. The meaning of each icon is spelled out below.

	Move up one level.
	Upload the selected items.
	Download the selected items.
	Create a new folder.
	Delete the selected item.
	Transfer in ASCII format.
	Apply a filter to the viewed files.
	Show file proprieties.
	Synchronize the folders' contents.
	Start a new session and show logon profiles.
	Quick connect to a site not in the profile list.
	Stop connection or transfer.
	Display large icon view of folder.
	Display small icon view of folder.
	Display list view of folder.
	Display file detail view of folder.
	Help topics.
	About FTP Voyager.

The program menus are nearly a repeat of the toolbar operations. The File menu shown below produces only two additional choices not shown on the default toolbar. The "File | View" is one of these as well as the "File | Open" submenu. The later will open Word Pad by default and show the content of any text or html file on the server. The program triggered by this menu item can be changed to another of your choice in "View | Options." At the bottom of the menu the most recently visited sites are listed for easy and quick re-access. I will display that dialog shortly.

The Edit menu provides the additional help of Find Text commands and a handy way to copy a URL.

The View menu is where you find the choices for turning on the displays of various toolbars and icon views and arrangements. The Options submenu is really where the action is.

Examining the Options menu is a bit of a shock due to the presence of thirteen tabs packed full of choices. Remember, none of these need to be dealt with to use the program successfully and rewardingly. These are choices. They effect the way the program defaults in most cases.

For instance, the General tab shown below allows you to define the length of time you continue to be actively logged onto the site after your last action is completed. It provides a way to change the number of previous sites that are listed in the File menu. It also lets you define the way the program opens. It is not necessary to have the program display the Site Manager New Session screen if you don't wish to. Experienced users will like the default anonymous password entry too.

The List tab on the "View | Options" menu provides yet another example of FTP Voyager's ability to customize. It is possible to activate a one-click mode of operation that, for some, will seem more compatible with the Windows 98 and Internet Explorer Active Desktop Web View they use. You can even customize down to seeing the file time include seconds in a file details display and change the file size information to read in Kilobyte or Megabytes if you choose.

I have only chosen four of these thirteen tabs. The last example of FTP Voyager's customizability shows the Log tab options. These choices effect the feedback window at the bottom of the program. As you can see in the image below, the size, permanence, and color coding of messages in this area are entirely changeable. The colors shown in this review reflect the program's defaults.

The Toolbar tab allows you to edit the buttons seen on the toolbar. You may recall that I mentioned the "File | Open" submenu option was not part of the default toolbar. It can, however, be added as an icon to the toolbar if you wish. This modification is accomplished by choosing the "View | Options" menu and then the Toolbar tab. A dialog will pop up that will be familiar to any user of Microsoft Office or many other programs that allow adding and removing toolbar icons with a simple mouse click.

I have only chosen four of these thirteen tabs. The last example I'll show of FTP Voyager's customizability is the "View | Options | Editors" tab. The Editors tab in this View | Options menu section allows you to add editors of your choice for various file extensions. The information entered here will define which program is used to open a file when you use the "File | Open" command on the menu.

For instance, files on the remove server with the ".TXT" or ".txt" extensions can be opened with WordPad, Textpad, or whatever you choose. The same is true for ".HTML," or ".JPG" files, and so on. This makes a wonderful interactive editing capability that further extends the value of FTP Voyager. Local files are not treated in this same manner, but I understand this capability is being considered for a future release.

These options are all discussed and defined in the program's Help files. The Help entries, by the way, are especially handy since they operate as hypertext. Certain key words in any description will link you to the corresponding help screen with a mouse click.

Moving along the menubar to the next entry we find the Tools menu. The Tools menu on the main menubar primarily lists the choices found in the toolbar and seen previously. The Find Files, Clear Log, and Import (other FTP program logon settings) are notably new.

Perhaps the Import submenu is the most noteworthy. Unlike other FTP programs, FTP Voyager helps you migrate into it by streamlining the process of leaving your old program behind without laboriously finding addresses and passwords. There are programs available that are not supported by this import command. But all of my favorites, including a lesser known product, FTP Explorer, is present. The list includes CuteFTP and WS_FTP as representative of the most well-known competitors. The image below shows the list of six products that are supported at this time.

All one does is click on the program name and navigate to the setting if necessary. It even knows if you don't have one of the programs installed - as soon as I clicked on Bullet Proof FTP Sites, it told me I didn't have that program!

Well, what about file transfers?
I suppose the most important thing about FTP programs is the file transfer! If a site will support the feature, FTP Voyager will not only do the transfer as expected but it will automatically resume when a transfer is interrupted. This is a wonderful feature, to be sure. At all other times, the least amount of feedback you will receive in a download will look like the screen shot below. The icon above the feedback window is the toolbar icon for downloading. You can't hardly misunderstand the meaning of this icon. It shows a document coming in a downward direction. Below the icon is the "Getting" window. It reads "Getting Survey3.xls" because the XLS file is what I was downloading at the moment.

You also see the file progress in both bytes and percent and the overall progress (if you have multiple files to receive) in bytes and percent. Finally, you have an estimation of the time needed to complete the transfer. This is excellent feedback. The only other stuff one might want is to know how efficient the connection was in bytes by second. FTP Voyager also makes it easy to have unattended transfers by letting you log off when the action is over.

The same sort of windows opens for uploading as you can see from the image below. Maybe I'm just too simple, but I appreciate the program using the terms "getting" and "putting" to make the direction of the transfer clear. It seems that Rhino Software has kept the end user in mind at every possible opportunity. That is just another fine example.

Advanced settings
The basic setup of the program is probably perfect for most users. If, however, you must tweak a program to feel that you really have it performing uniquely for you, FTP Voyager won't disappoint you. The advanced settings dialog is the place to go. The main interface for advanced setting is shown below.

Connection settings allow you to customize each FTP site profile with such choices as bypassing proxy servers for the session and using specific accounts. The options can be seen below.

The general settings concern actions for prompting in the areas of transfers, user IDs, passwords, and date/time stamps. This is shown below.

Folders options in the Advanced Settings let you specify the download path and the local folders of your choice. The picture below illustrates that these are conveniently accompanied with Browse buttons.

The Command option lets you set up events that would operate like macros when you log on. I did not have occasion to require these, but the feature would be great for, say auto updates of online schedule pages and calendars or newsletters, etc. These are entered in the page below.

Even the type of password encryption can be altered on the advanced settings password page.

Special feature
Some of the important features of FTP Voyager, from my point of view, include the ability to dial your ISP automatically upon demand, and automatically continue with broken uploads or downloads. I especially like the program's ability to perform a folder synchronization with a single click. This makes for easy web site maintenance. Additionally, it makes it possible to run, open, view, and edit files on an FTP site without downloading them.

Another feature I liked was the use of the right-click button on the mouse. If you locate the mouse over any file or directory and perform a right-click, the following menu will pop up. It allows short cuts for all the functions FTP Voyager is capable of performing on a file.

Unlike some other popular FTP programs, like WS_FTP, you can drag and drop files from Windows Explorer into the site window and create a file transfer just as you do between Explorer windows on your desktop. The local PC folders are easy to navigate and overall, the program feels like you are in a Windows Explorer session so it is intuitive and easy to take advantage of its features without a steep learning curve. However, one thing that is even better than Windows Explorer is the inclusive and exclusive filtering of files that can be created with the filter button seen earlier. I always wondered why the filtering capability of Windows 3.1x was abandoned in the Windows 95 metaphor of the desktop. You get it back in FTP Explorer. And, still in keeping with the Windows metaphor, you can let transfers continue in the background while doing other file activities on line or on the desktop.

Conclusion
I'm sold. FTP Voyager is my choice in FTP programs. It is fast, intuitive, and does everything with great user interface graphics. FTP Voyager can be evaluated as shareware and cost $37.50 for a single user license. Quantity licenses are available. Rhino Software is located here.

This is a fine program that works in the same manner that explorer works in Windows 95/98. It is intuitively simple but complete in features. I give FTP Voyager five out of five Go Inside Review Lights.