Cyberduck

Update. Cyberduck 3.3 has been released.

The new cat will be let out of the bag next month earlier than anticipated. Cyberduck is getting ready. Lot of work has been put into Snow Leopard compatibility recently with a shift to Rococoa instead of the deprecated bindings used before. Thanks to Duncan McGregor and the Rococoa community for their work which serves as the new solid foundation for Cyberduck to build upon.

Please test the latest beta release to help make the transition as smooth as possible. Be sure to report any rough edges you may find.

The beta currently has the following limitations:

• No MobileMe bookmark synchronization when running as 64bit application. Use the Finder Info panel to select Open in 32-bit mode for the Cyberduck.app application bundle if you need this feature.
• No AppleScript support beside basic Open URL events from third party applications like web browsers.
• No Dashboard Widget whatsoever as this uses the AppleScript interface.

The current beta requires an Intel processor and Mac OS X 10.5 or later. Progress is tracked in ticket #3039.

The latest 3.2.1 point release was a maintenance release but brought much better Amazon S3 integration for those serious about content delivery using the Amazon CloudFront infrastructure. For those who have skipped the release notes, a quick reminder of the new features that let you control and fine tune your distributions from within Cyberduck.

• If you want to distribute content using BitTorrent, the Info window now displays the URL for the selected file.
• Temporary publicly accessible URLs are displayed in the Info window also in the S3 section. This allows to give URLs to third parties to access content that is generally not accessible from anonymous users.
• Access Logging can be configured for both S3 and CloudFront. Log files are stored under logs/ the S3 bucket
• To control caching, a Cache-Control header can be configured for files. This allows you to minimize access costs for static content.

For more details, refer to the Cyberduck Wiki help section on S3.

Expect support for the Rackspace CloudFiles logging feature announced yesterday in an upcoming release.

There are several user interface refinements in the latest update to Cyberduck 3. First, you may have noticed the prominent new Open Connection icon contributed by Dietmar Kerschner in the toolbar. Also, you can now choose to display 64 pixel sized icons in the bookmark viewer with larger font size. This configuration option makes the new bookmark icons designed by Robert Curtis shine.

Also, there is a new hidden configuration option to adjust the font size in the browser window if you have readability problems with the default setting.

There is another compelling reason to upgrade to the latest 3.2 release of Cyberduck besides the usual enhancements and bug fixes the update provides. As a contributor to Cyberduck you receive a donation key that disables the donation prompt which is displayed periodically when quitting the application. Enter Cyberduck Premium Edition sort of.

When contributing money using Paypal, a key is automatically emailed to you. Contributors of localizations, icon design or similar should request a donation key from me. Also if you sent me a DVD from Amazon please contact me as I do not receive your address from Amazon.

If you have donated previously to Cyberduck via Paypal and have not received a donation key, you can recover your key.

The news and blog coverage of the 3.1 release of Cyberduck was broad and welcoming. Some excerpts here:

• Featured in the Amazon Web Services CloudFront Management Tool Roundup:

  Amazon CloudFront was designed to make it really easy to distribute content to users at high speed with low latency. Here are some new tools which provide a nice end-user interface to CloudFront.

• In a versiontracker.com comment:

  There was a German commercial for the old VW Beatle, many years ago: “Er läuft und läuft und läuft…”, which means it’s reliable and robust. The same applies to Cyberduck. (…)
  

• Mosso from Rackspace welcomes Cyberduck as the first tool to natively support Cloud Files:

  That’s right! Now you can access your Cloud Files data (even your CDN-enabled data!)

• Cyberduck is among the candidates for the best Amazon S3 File Manager Utility at stackoverflow.com.

  Best Amazon S3 File Manager Utility?

• Lindsey Kirkbride just discovered Quick Look in Cyberduck:

  This. Changes. Everything.