Isn't gFTP deprecated?

[Daniel Borgmann]

On Tue, 2004-09-21 at 23:16 +0100, Martin Alderson wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Sep 2004 23:58:39 +0200, Daniel Borgmann
> <spark-mailinglists at web.de> wrote:
> > Just a quick question. I noticed that gFTP appears in the default
> > desktop installation and I'm wondering if this isn't deprecated by the
> > Nautilus FTP stuff. It doesn't seem appropriate to me to use protocol-
> > specific applications for file managment in the 21. century. :)
> > gFTP also doesn't follow the HIG very well, exposes file paths to the
> > user and hidden files are not hidden by default. Hopefully I'm not
> > offending anyone, but I personally don't think that gFTP matches the
> > level of polish and usability of the other desktop parts.
> > My suggestion would be to not install it by default, but maybe I'm
> > missing something. Please excuse me if this was discussed before
> > already, I couldn't find anything in the archives.
> 
> While I see where you are coming from, I think keeping gFTP is a good
> idea because:
> 
> 1) Many, many people are used to a double pane, drag and drop
> interface for FTP and will not be happy with using a folder based
> system or not be able to find it. Look how many people use Windows
> Explorer for FTP vs SmartFTP, FlashFXP or whatever - everyone that I
> know uses a client for the job. (Yes, I know Windows Explorer sucks
> when it comes to FTP, but it works.. somewhat).

Well, it's true that many people I talk to don't even know that IE can
handle FTP sites, but is that a reason to ship a less usable
application? It's also a lot more discoverable in GNOME and network
transparency is quite an impressive feature, let's not be ashamed of it
and encourage users to actually use it.

> 2) gFTP presents a very 'relevant' UI for FTP, at least in my opinion.
> It has things like CHMOD and similar just a menu away.

Ugh, that's exactly what I'm talking about. :) The user should never
ever have to deal with terms like "chmod" in a modern GUI. After all
this is nothing but our good old unix file permissions and gftp doesn't
even care to explain this fact. It is unfortunate that Nautilus doesn't
support changing of file permissions on FTP servers yet, but I also
don't think that this is a required feature for the vast majority of
users.
I'm not aware of any obvious user-visible differences between FTP
locations and local locations, which would require a completely separate
application, using a whole new metaphor for file managment. I have been
using Nautilus as my exclusive FTP client since many months now, even
though it completely sucked before 2.8 and couldn't handle
authentication in a sane way. If this works for me as a web developer, I
don't see why this shouldn't work for basic users.

> However, I do agree with many of your sentiments and I don't really
> like gFTP because it is very clunky. However with a nice iconset it
> would intergrate much better, IMO.

The icons certainly are the least of its problems. ;)

-- 
Daniel Borgmann <spark at mayl.de>