FTP Explorer by Alan Chavis =========================== Copyright Notice ---------------- Copyright (c) 1995-1996 by Alan Chavis FTP Explorer is a trademark of Alan Chavis Release Notes ------------- THIS IS A BETA RELEASE. THIS MEANS THAT YOU WILL ENCOUNTER PROBLEMS. PLEASE HELP ME TO IMPROVE THE PROGRAM BY REPORTING ANY PROBLEMS OR SUGGESTIONS TO: achavis@datacrit.com The main objective of FTP Explorer is to provide an FTP client that looks and feels just like the Windows 95 Explorer interface. Please keep this in mind while evaluating it. When released, FTP Explorer will be distributed FREE for non-commercial use. Commercial pricing is still up in the air, but will be competetive with other FTP clients. Please email me about what you think a fair price would be. THE LATEST RELEASE WILL ALWAYS BE AVAILABLE AT: ftp.datacrit.com /pub/ftpx If you would like to subscribe to the FTP Explorer mailing list and be notified via email about new releases, send email to: listserv@datacrit.com with no subject, and put this in the body of the email: subscribe ftpx NOTE: DON'T PUT ANYTHING ELSE IN THE BODY OF THE MESSAGE If you thought you were on the mailing list, but didn't receive a notification about the latest build, you may want to subscribe again. Please note that FTP Explorer requires a 32-bit TCP/IP stack. If you are using a 16-bit stack you will need to upgrade to a 32-bit stack to use FTP Explorer. Disclaimer of Warranty ---------------------- THIS SOFTWARE AND THE ACCOMPANYING FILES ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND WHETHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED. In no event shall the author be held liable for any damages whatsoever, including without limitation, damages for loss of business profits, business interruption, loss of business information, or any other loss arising from the use or inability to use the software. INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS ------------------------- Installation used to be simple. Just put the EXE wherever you wanted and run it. Well, now I've gone and added a shell extension and you'll have to do a little more work until we get a nice install program. (You'd rather have more features and less bugs over a fancy install anyway right?) Installation of the shell extension is optional, and is only required if you want to take advantage of drag and drop downloads and creation of shortcuts. (You can drag and drop upload without it, and the shortcut option on the connect dialog will work without it.) Be advised that because the shell extension runs in the shell's process, if it crashes it can bring the shell down with it. It seems to work well, but I can't guarantee that you won't have any problems with it (this *is* a beta after all). If anyone has any questions of a technical nature regarding the shell extension and what it's actually doing, feel free to email me and I'll clue you in. Installing the shell extension is fairly simple: 1. Copy the FTPXEXT.DLL file to your SYSTEM directory. 2. Open the Windows 95 explorer and go to wherever FTPXEXT.REG is. (Probably wherever you extracted FTP Explorer to) 3. Right click on FTPXEXT.REG and choose the merge option from the context menu. This will add some entries to your registry under the following keys: HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{eb9ebda0-b3e7-11cf-81c9-0000c0aa665f} HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{eb9ebda0-b3e7-11cf-81c9-0000c0aa665f}\InProcServer32 HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shellex\CopyHookHandlers\FTP Explorer 4. You will probably need to restart your system to activate the shell extension. If you want to uninstall the shell extension, just delete FTPXEXT.DLL from your SYSTEM directory and restart. You can remove the entries from your registry as well if you feel confident you know what your doing, otherwise you can just leave them there, they don't take up much space. What's New ---------- * Changes in Version 0.00.033 (06/02/96) - Fixed a bug that was causing the columns in the details view to be sized to 0 width if program was closed in any other view. - Fixed a bug where program was unable to start fpArchie if fpArchie was located in a "long filename" path (i.e. \Program Files). - Fixed a bug where if the folder was empty, the tree view icon stayed green after the LIST command was complete. - Fixed a bug where certain shell functions (such as changing wallpaper) were performed while connected, a blocking thread was not allowing the function to complete. - Fixed a bug where transfer progress dialog was not appearing on top of the main window properly. - Added code to check for insufficient disk space before a file is downloaded. - Fixed a bug when "Quick Viewing" files that "Quick View" does not recognize where the file would be deleted before quick view could open it. - Added percentage complete indicator to transfer progress dialog's caption. - Added "Port" option to connect dialog. - Enabled transfer progress dialog for non-background transfers. - Enabled non-background uploading. - Added "Transfer Dialog Threshold" option to transfer options page. This options controls how large a file has to be before the transfer progress dialog is displayed. When transferring many small files, displaying the transfer dialog can degrade performance slightly. NOTE: The transfer dialog is always displayed for background transfers. - Added option to connection options page to hide files that begin with a period. * Changes in Version 0.00.032 (06/01/96) - Fixed some problems with date/time display on certain VMS systems. * Changes in Version 0.00.031 (06/01/96) - Program no longer terminates until last active transfer is either completed or cancelled. - Fixed bug which prevented "Small Icons" or "List" list view settings from being restored between sessions. - Program now saves column width settings for list details view. Sorry, still no way to change the order of the columns. :( - Fixed a bug related to background transfers where if password was entered via password prompt dialog, the password was not available to the background transfer so it couldn't log in. - Fixed bug on VMS servers where rename command was not working. - Improved support for multiple drives. * Changes in Version 0.00.030 (05/30/96) - Fixed some problems with server reporting "UNKNOWN Type: L8" in response to SYST command. (listserv-ftp.dartmouth.edu) - Fixed a bug that was causing the SYST command to be issued every time a list command was issued. - Improved VMS support. Program now remembers current drive info. Please note that to use the "Go to" command on a VMS system, you currently have to specify the path with unix style slashes instead of VMS style paths. (i.e. drive:[pub.misc] becomes drive:/pub/misc) - Fixed a bug that was preventing larger files from being transferred at all unless they were transferred in the background. - "Go to" command now treats path relative to the current directory. If you enter a path that doesn't start with a slash "/" character, or a drive specification, then it will append it to the current directory and attempt to change to that directory. * Changes in Version 0.00.029 (05/29/96) - Added "Sequential or Simultaneous" option to transfer options page. This options allows the user to specify whether to transfer queued items sequentially, or to start multiple threads for simultaneous transfers. There is also an option to specify the maximum number of logins. - Moved english resources back into main executable to facilitate development. The program will now look for "ftpxres.dll" and use it if it finds it, otherwise it will use the built in resources. If you are using english resources, you can delete the file "ftpxres.dll" that was provided with earlier builds. Localized DLL's for Norway, Russia, and France are under development. * Changes in Version 0.00.028 (05/28/96) - Fixed a bug that was causing the program to consume large quantities of system resources when listing large directories. (i.e. Microsoft's /Softlib/MSLFILES). - Program now saves the state of the toolbar and status bar between sessions. - Fixed some problems with a Silicon Graphics server. * Changes in Version 0.00.027 (05/27/96) - Fixed a bug that was causing the "Go to" command to not work if you tried to go to a folder you hadn't been to before. - Fixed a bug that was causing folders not to be listed completely if the program encountered a "process" file. - Fixed a bug that was causing a thread not to terminate when the program was closed. This caused the program to show up in the task list once for every time it was executed. - Moved program resources to a separate DLL (ftpxres.dll) to facilitate localization. - Transfer progress dialog was only showing download animation whether uploading or downloading. Fixed. - Fixed a bug that was causing the "Search" animation to continue playing after disconnecting. - Added a line to the .reg file for the shell extension to allow it to install the extension properly under Windows NT. - Fixed a bug that was causing the list command to "hang" when listing folders with a lot of entries. - Fixed some more problems with specific server types. * Changes in Version 0.00.026 (05/25/96) - Dates should now be displayed appropriately for the current locale. - Connection attempts setting must now be greater than 0. - Added "Go to" button to toolbar. The bitmap for this might change but "Open" seemed sort of appropriate. * Changes in Version 0.00.025 (05/25/96) - Fixed a bug where the TEMP directory cleanup routine was detecting the "." and ".." entries as files. * Changes in Version 0.00.024 (05/23/96) (NOT RELEASED) - Added support for VMS FTP sites. It's not perfect, but it works (I think). Please let me know how it works for you. I tested it against a VMS MultiNet V3.4 system (ftp.iup.edu). NOTE: VMS seems to use some weird numbers for the file sizes it reports, so the sizes are not very accurate. Also, I was unable to test uploading to this server, so if anyone has access to a VMS system that you can upload to, please test this and let me know if it works for you. - Fixed a bug where the tree view was not being refreshed sometimes if the corresponding folder was opened from the list view. - Threshold for background transfers now defaults to 50k. * Changes in Version 0.00.023 (05/22/96) (NOT RELEASED) - Revamped Drag and Drop routines. A shell extension is now required to enable download drag and drop functions. This was necessary to be able to queue files for download and then download them in the background. The program will be unable to perform the drop operation if the shell extension is not installed, and it will probably create a folder named "ftpxdrop" in whatever folder you dropped the item into. Hopefully I'll be able to improve this and be able to detect whether the shell extension is installed in the future. Also, you can only drop files on shell windows. If you try to drop a file on an application, you'll get an error message. I'm looking into a work around for this. - You can now select multiple items and drag them out of FTP explorer and drop them on a shell window. Selected files will be queued for download, and shortcuts will be created for any selected folders. * Changes in Version 0.00.022 (05/19/96) (NOT RELEASED) - Added hot keys: F2 = Rename F5 = Refresh CTRL-G = Go To - Totally revamped FTP subsystem to run in a separate thread and to "Queue" commands for sequential execution. This allows the user to change directories in rapid succession and the FTP subsystem will eventually catch up, refreshing the directories in the order that they were requested. This should make the user interface much more responsive overall. The tree view now reflects the status of folders that are being refreshed. Folders are gray as before when they have not been listed yet and now they turn green while they are pending an update, and finally turn yellow when the refresh process is complete. - The "FTP Log" view now has it's own thread. This was necessary to allow any of the various threads to post log updates and for the log to remain sequential. When you queue up alot of actions the log thread may lag behind, but it should eventually catch up. - The tree view should now properly update itself when folders are added, deleted, or renamed. - Fixed a bug where the "FTP Log" view size was not always being restored properly between sessions. - The "Byte Counter" on the status bar now increments in 128 byte intervals. Previously it only incremented in 1024 byte intervals and it had a bug that made it reset itself which made it useless for the most part. - Fixed several bugs related to logging in to "Home" directories. Previously, if the "Initial Dir" setting for a given profile was left blank, FTP Explorer would attempt to change to the root of the server, which caused problems on some servers. Now, it just goes wherever the server takes it and determines where it is once it gets there. - Finally got around to fixing the small icons! Someone tell Microsoft to fix and document ExtractIconEx()! - Added "Search" animation to "List" view when folder is being refreshed. - Multiple selection delete is now functional. - Rename command now de-selects all selected items except for the focused item. (This is how the Windows 95 explorer works) - Reworked the description parsing routine to be more intelligent when parsing index files. Please report any sites that are not parsed correctly. - Debugged shutting down while the program is busy communicating with the server. It should be much more robust now. - Added code to trim leading and trailing whitespace characters off of "Host", "Login", and "Initial Path" values. The program will now also trim trailing slash "/" characters off of the initial path value if it is not a single slash. Let me know if this causes problems for anyone. - Added "Remember" option to tools menu. This stores the current folder's path to the current profile's "Initial Path" value. - Added options to "Paths" options page to automatically clean up the temp dir at shutdown. By default the program warns the user before deleting files from the temp dir to prevent accidental deletions. This warning can be disabled if desired. - If you "QuickView" a file, a low priority thread is launched to watch for the "QuickView" program to end. When "QuickView" ends, the temporary file is deleted. If you quit FTP Explorer before quitting "QuickView", the file will not be deleted automatically, but the file should be deleted eventually by the temp file cleanup routine if it is enabled. - Added option to warn if excessively large file is selected for "QuickView" or "Open". This option can be configured via the "Transfer" options page. - Added "Find" option to the "Tools" menu to launch fpArchie if it is installed. If it is not installed, a dialog box will appear that will prompt the user to connect to a site so they can download fpArchie. - Moved "Connect" and "Disconnect" menu options to the "Tools" menu to be more consistent with the Windows 95 explorer interface. - Added "Download" option to "File" and context menus, and added a "Download" button to the tool bar. This option downloads the selected files to the default download path. The user is prompted if the file(s) already exist. - Added "Upload" option to "File" menu and added an "Upload" button to the toolbar. This option presents the user with a "File Open" dialog box to allow them to select files to be uploaded to the current folder. Multiple files can be selected. - Transfers are now "Queued" and handled by a separate thread, which initiates a separate FTP connection automatically. This allows the user to connect to a site, queue up a few transfers, then connect to a different site and queue up some more. The transfer thread will process each transfer in the sequence it was queued. - Added "Transfer Manager" option to the "Window" menu. This window displays the status of queued transfers. (It will eventually allow for control over the transfers, such as cancelling, re-submitting, etc.) - Fixed bug on "Transfer Progress" dialog where progress meter was freaking out when large files were transferred. Please report any bugs related to this. - Disabled "New Folder" menu option when not connected. - Program now accepts FTP URLs on the command line. Connections via URLs are not saved as connection profiles, although I may add an option for this later. URLs must end in a slash (/) character because the program trims all characters beyond the last slash to eliminate filenames. - Program now uses shell API to aquire the correct path to the "Desktop". This should solve some problems for international users whose "Desktop" is not called "Desktop". - Added "Select All" and "Invert Selection" options to the "Edit" menu. These currently only affect the "List" view. - Browse buttons on "Paths" options page now use the Windows 95 ShBrowseForFolder() routine to present a better looking browse dialog box. - Decided this was a bigger project then initially thought. :) * Changes in Version 0.00.021 (05/06/96) - Program now saves splitter positions between sessions. (This also saves the "FTP Log" option setting on the view menu) - Program now optionally saves window size, position and state (minimized, restored, or maximized) between sessions. Size and position are only saved if the program is closed from a restored (not minimized or maximized) state. - Fixed bug that occured when window was sized too small. - Added toolbar button to toggle "FTP Log" view on and off. - Added option to "Include description bar for right and left panes" to "Options" dialog to allow toggling the "All Folders" and "Contents of ..." captions on and off. - Fixed bug on "General Options" page where "Index file size" edit control was not disabled initially if "Autoload Descriptions" was turned off. - Fixed bug where the "Sort by type" option was not working correctly. - Fixed bug that prevented use of backspace key while renaming files because backspace was defined as an accelerator key for moving to the parent directory. Added code to handle backspace key separately and only when not editing a list item. - Added "File/New/Folder" option to "File" and context menu to allow subdirectory creation. - Browse buttons on "Paths" options page are now functional. - Program can now import "CuteFTP" site lists (TREE.DAT). This has only been tested with CuteFTP v1.4 Final Beta 7 32-bit. Please let me know if you run into problems with other versions. - Program no longer echos password to "FTP Log" view for security reasons. - Program will now prompt for a password if the login name is anything other than "anonymous" and no password is specified for the profile. Added an option to the "Connection" options page to disable this. This can also be disabled directly from the dialog that prompts for the password. - Fixed bug where anonymous login password (email address) values were not updated for each profile if the email address was changed. The connect dialog now reads the password value directly from the email address value if the "Anonymous" option is selected. - Passwords stored in the registry are now encrypted. The program should automatically encrypt any existing passwords the first time the new version is executed. - Added "Save As" button to toolbar. - Removed "Cut", "Copy", "Paste", and "Undo" buttons from toolbar. These may come back in a future build when I make them do something. These options still exist under the "Edit" menu, but don't do anything. - Program now prompts user to create sample connection profiles if no profiles exist. If you have any really good sites that you feel should be part of the samples, let me know. - Added a prompt that warns the user that the email address is empty and will launch the options dialog if allowed to. This is intended to point new users in the right direction, and will only appear once. After that, you're on your own. :) * Changes in Version 0.00.020 (04/24/96) - Initial public beta release. * Changes in Version 0.00.019 (04/19/96) - Fixed bug where "Options" dialog was not saving changes to the "Connection" page. - Added "Import" option to "Tools" menu to allow importing connection info from WS_FTP. Other formats will be supported in the future. - Added "Byte Counter" indicator to the status bar to give some feedback when downloading directory contents. - Program now attempts to retain creation original date and time for downloaded files. * Changes in Version 0.00.018 (04/18/96) - Fixed the description feature. It's been broken for a while and I just noticed it! * Changes in Version 0.00.017 (04/17/96) - Added icons to the transfer dialogs. - Changed drag and drop operations from list view to work as "move" operations so that the TEMP dir is cleaned up automatically. - Added code to the "Connect" dialog to set the focus to the profile name combo box after an "Add" or "Remove" operation. - Fixed bug that was caused by fix for older Windows NT FTP servers. Newer NT servers list directory contents differently. - Fixed bug caused by code attempting to update transfer dialog after the dialog was closed. * Changes in Version 0.00.016 (04/09/96) - Program now detects if "Quick View Plus" is installed and reflects this in the "File" menu and context menus. Right now I'm doing this manually, but I hope to add support for any installed "Shell Extension Context Menu Handlers" in the future. For more info about "Quick View Plus" check out http://www.inso.com - Added "Attempts" and "Retry Delay" options to "Connect" dialog to allow customizing these settings on an individual connection basis. These settings default to the settings from the "Options" dialog. * Changes in Version 0.00.015 (04/08/96) - Fixed some bugs on the "Connect" dialog. If you added a new profile, or deleted a profile, the "Profile Name" combo box was not being reloaded. If you changed the name of the current profile, and then saved it or selected a different profile from the combo box, the combo was not updated with the new name properly. - Fixed a bug with the "File" context menu where the "Save As" and "Open" options were not functioning properly. * Changes in Version 0.00.014 (04/07/96) - Fixed a bug that was causing the program to lock up or GPF if you opened the file menu without being connected. This crept into 013 when I added the "Create Shortcut" option to the file menu. * Changes in Version 0.00.013 (04/07/96) - Changed "Autoload File Descriptions" to default to on. - Added "Autoload File Descriptions" size limit to "Options" dialog. This was previously hard coded to 50k. - Implemented asynchronous host lookup call to prevent non-responsiveness during connect sequence. Program was blocking on host lookups before and would not respond or repaint itself until the host name was resolved. - "Options" dialog is now a tabbed dialog with "General", "Paths", and "Connection" pages. - Fixed several problems with date and time field. Program now displays appropriate date and time for current locale. Also, this fixed a problem with sorting by date. - Changed the transfer animations. - Fixed a memory leak that was occurring when a download was cancelled. - Changed "bps" indicators to read "bytes/sec" for more clarity. - Fixed another bug that was causing Log pane to scroll to the right for long lines. - Worked on optimizing download throughput. Program is now performing at least as well as other popular FTP clients. - Added "transfer complete" and "transfer incomplete" notices to FTP log stream. The "transfer complete" notice also displays throughput information. - Added "Create Shortcut" option to "File" and context menus to create a shortcut to a folder on the desktop for the currently selected folder. - Added "Connection Retry" feature. This allows user to configure the number of times to try to connect, and the number of seconds to wait between each try. - Added "Enable sound" option to "General" options page. This allows the user to enable or disable any sounds generated by the program. - Added sounds to connection progress. Program will now play the default "Ding" sound on connecting, and the default "Asterisk" sound when a connection attempt fails. (The specific sounds are configurable via the control panel.) I'll be adding additional sounds in the future. Please let me know where you would like to see sounds added. - Added "Automatically reconnect" option to "Connection" page. This option is currently disabled, but when completed it will allow the program to automatically reconnect if the connection fails. * Changes in Version 0.00.012 (04/05/96) - Added keyboard accelerators to "Connect" and "Options" dialogs. - Added "Window" menu to allow quick switching between Tree, List, and Log views. - Added "Vertical Split" and "Horizontal Split" options to the "Window" menu to allow maniplating splitters via the keyboard. - Added confirmation dialog for delete operations. - Changed "Name" caption on "Connect" dialog to "Profile Name" and "Host" caption to "Host Address" for greater clarity. - Fixed bug where context menu initiated by Shift-F10 was not properly positioned over selected item. - Changed context menus so that they are more context sensitive depending on what is selected. - Added "Save Log As" option to file menu. This allows the FTP log file to be saved. - Removed trailing line feed chars from FTP Log view entries. This eliminates that annoying blank line that used to appear at the bottom of the Log view. - Added "Folder Shortcuts". You can now drag folders to the desktop or shell windows to create a shortcut to the FTP site! I plan to add the ability to drag folders from the Tree view as well. - In implementing the shortcut feature I added a command line option as follows: //Profile Name!/Initial/Path The command line option must start with two slashes, followed by the profile name. The initial path is optional, but if included, must be separated from profile name by an exclamation point. If a path is not specified, then the profile's default path is used. If this syntax ends up being too confusing, I'll probably change it. - Added "Shortcut" button to "Connect" dialog to provide an easy way to add a shortcut for the profile to the desktop. - Added an option to automatically highlight the last line in the FTP log. - Added the rest of the possible "Sort" options to the "Arrange Icons" menus. * Changes in Version 0.00.011 (04/04/96) - Changed connect dialog so bytes transferred is displayed as "(xxx of xxx bytes transferred)". - Fixed tooltips on delete and properties toolbar buttons. - The main program icon got hosed when I added the "Go to" feature. It's now been changed back to the correct icon. - Added code to make the TAB key cycle through the Tree, List, and Log views. - Added code to auto select the first item in the List view when it is loaded. - Fixed bug that was causing Tree and List views to not regain the focus when the program lost and regained focus. - Changed the transfer buffer sizes to 1024 bytes. This seems to help the throughput some, but there's probably some more tuning to do to find the right size. This may become an option. * Changes in Version 0.00.010 (04/03/96) - Fixed bug in connect dialog where garbage was sometimes being appended to strings stored in the registry. - Fixed bug where if invalid initial path was specified in the connect dialog, it would still be added to the tree view. - Password field on "Connect" dialog now hides the password based on whether or not "Anonymous" is selected. - Backspace key now changes to parent directory. - Fixed bug where tree view was not properly tracking the current directory when CD was changed via method other than via tree control. - Added "Go to" command on new "Tools" menu to allow user to go to any specified directory. - Upload dialog now has same indicators as download dialog. (i.e. file size, bytes transfered, etc.) - Added "Bps" (bytes per second) indicator to transfer dialogs * Changes in Version 0.00.009 (04/01/96) - Implemented background downloading. This works by opening a new FTP connection, so it takes a little while before it starts up. Background transfers are only functional for "Save As" and are not available for "Open" and "Quick View" commands due to dependancy issues. Eventually I may come back to this and try to make it work somehow. - Added option to "Options" dialog to allow user to specify the file size threshold for background transfers. - Added code to release the mouse capture after a drag drop operation to fix bug where mouse was not working during download initiated by drag drop. - Added "Add" and "Save" buttons to "Connect" dialog to add and save entries. - The "Remove" button on "Connect" dialog is now functional. - Added filename being transferred to download dialog caption. - Added file size to filename label on download dialog. - Added bytes transferred status indicator to download dialog. - Fixed the sorting routine for the list view. It's been broken since I added the "Description" column. If you clicked on the size column, it sorted by description. Also added the rest of the columns to the sort routine so you can now sort by "Permissions", "Owner" and "Group". - Added "Properties" dialog for item detail information. - Fixed a bug that was making the tree view folders turn yellow before they had been actually opened. This bug was also slowing down the process of filling the tree view. * Changes in Version 0.00.008 (03/28/96) - Program now saves the list style to the registry so that it is restored the next time you run it. - Added an option to specify the default download path to the options dialog. This only effects the "Save As" command. - The "FTP Log" pane is now read only. A side effect of this is that it turned gray. I'm not sure if I like it or not so let me know what you think and maybe I'll force it back to white. - Added an "FTP Log" option to the view menu to easily toggle the "FTP Log" pane on and off. Actually all it does is resize it. - The "FTP Log" pane now attempts to remain the same size when the main window is resized. - You can now cancel a connection attempt by selecting "disconnect" from the file menu or clicking the "disconnect" icon on the toolbar. - Fixed the "connect" icon on the toolbar so that it is disabled during connection attempts. - Removed horizontal scroll bar from "FTP Log" pane. - Transfer dialog is now closing the data socket when the cancel button is selected. This is just a quick fix to kill the transfer, you will probably have to disconnect. - Changed the toolbar icons for "connect" and "disconnect". - The options dialog's caption is now "Options" instead of "Dialog" - DUH. - Fooled around with the main icon a little. Whadaya think? * Changes in Version 0.00.007 (03/26/96) - Program now uploads files dropped on it to the current directory. - Added quick fix for crash if you tried to close the program while it was busy doing something. - Now loading version info from resource info. - Changed EXE name to ftpx.exe. - Added my email address to the about dialog. - Added "initial path" option to connect dialog. - Fixed bug related to new "initial path" option where tree was not working properly if the parent directory had not been listed before. Known Problems -------------- 1. The file formats for the INDEX files on the various FTP sites vary widely, so you can help by using the "Autoload File Descriptions" feature and reporting any problems you have with it. Currently the program only looks for INDEX, INDEX.TXT, and 00_INDEX.TXT, so if you find other filenames or ones that don't load in correctly email them to me. Don't forget to include the address of the server that you get them from so I can test the fixes. 2. Cut, Copy, Paste, and Undo options don't do anything. These may go away. 3. Context menus do not reflect current status properly. (i.e. List view type, sort order, etc.) 4. There are some problems related to dial up connections when the program is used to initiate a winsock connection. If the connection attempt times out before winsock gets connected. You have to either connect winsock manually or shut down FTP Explorer and restart. For now the best solution is to connect your winsock manually before attempting to connect to a site with FTP Explorer. I'll be doing some testing soon to try to eliminate this problem. 5. Under certain conditions, the list view search animation may continue to run even after you are disconnected. I'm trying to nail this down. If anyone finds a way to consistantly reproduce it, please let me know. 6. Sometimes if you are sizing the main window while a folder is being refreshed, the list view doesn't get refreshed. I'm looking into this. 7. Sometimes a folder in the tree view will stay "green" as if it's being refreshed, when actually it's done. 8. If you drag a group of files to the desktop, you sometimes have to hit F5 to refresh the desktop for them to show up. I have a fix for this that I'll be implementing soon. 9. If you enter an invalid path via the "Go to" command, it will be created in the tree view anyway. 10. The program does not react when the server closes the control connection when a timeout occurs. Eventually I'll probably add some sort of auto reconnect option to handle this. Planned Changes and Additions ----------------------------- These are not prioritized. If you want to encourage any of these, send your vote in via the ftpx mailing list. 1. Transfer of entire directory structures. (Don't bother voting :) 2. Will probably add an option to the menu structure to allow you to load in an INDEX file manually, so you don't have to wait every time you change directories. 3. Add drag drop support to tree view. Currently only the list view does any drag and drop. 4. Make recent file list represent recent connections. 5. Add some sort of notification when an action fails, i.e. if the user doesn't have rights to rename a file. This would be useful if you have the "FTP Log" pane sized small enough where you can't see what's going on. 6. A help file and an install program is on the way. 7. Add a menu option to change a link so that it is treated as a file, and possibly an option to change the default to treat all links as files. If anyone knows of a simple way to diferentiate between file links and directory links, please clue me in! 8. Add context menus to the Tree view. 9. Might add a menu option to expand and collapse tree view branches. 10. Add option to allow changing file permissions from properties page. 11. Add proxy and firewall support. 12. Might add some sort of directory synchronization mechanism to allow transferring only files that have changed. This is way down the road! 13. Add option to change the "FTP Log" font. 14. Might add an option to allow selection of files via wildcards. 15. Add internationalization features. If anyone would like to translate the strings I use to another language, I'll be glad to utilize them. 16. Add option to prompt for login name if it is left blank. 17. Add option to hide files that begin with a period. 18. Add options to allow customization of the order of the list view. 19. Add some sort of capability to move files from one remote folder to another. 20. Add an uninstall option. 21. Add an option to disable the prompt that asks you if you are sure you want to delete a profile from the connection dialog. 22. Add the ability to delete files when you drag them to the recycle bin. 23. Add an option to launch another instance of FTP Explorer. 24. Add "Sounds" page to the options dialog to allow for custom sounds. 25. I've looked into adding the local drives into the tree view, and it is also possible to integrate FTP Explorer with the Windows 95 shell. These would both require major changes to the fundamental architecture of the program, so I've decided to finish what I've started and release a stable, full featured stand alone product before delving into anything like this. 26. Add some sort of resume feature for transfers that get interrupted. 27. Add the ability to drag files from one FTP Explorer instance to another. 28. Make the goto-dialog store directories only when pressing save. 29. Add option to configure file extensions that always download as ascii or binary. 30. Add a stop button. 31. Choose directory option for creating shortcuts. 32. Add the ability to create shortcuts to remote files so that they can be downloaded with a single double click on the shortcut. 33. Add a "Treeview" toggle to the "View" menu. 34. Add the ability to specify different default download paths for each connection profile.