Activity Window

In Mail.app, you can open Window → Activity (Command-0) to show all pending networking activities. Cyberduck 3 now includes the same functionality. It gives you a better idea how much longer the progress bar will still be spinning and allows you to stop pending background tasks. Prevously, this was only possible for the currently running task using the Stop toolbar button in the browser window.

Check this out in the the latest nightly build. Mac OS X 10.4 or later required.

Open Web URL

As already noted by macapper.com, the just released Beta 2 of Cyberduck 3 adds the feature to open the corresponding web address of a file selected in Cyberduck with your default web browser. For this feature to work, you have to specify a reasonable default path in your bookmark (e.g. /home/dkocher/public_html/) which must be the directory accessed by the web server as your document root. Using an Apache webserver, this is the DocumentRoot directive. Also in the bookmark setting, you can edit the Web URL which allows you to enter the HTTP URL of the webserver using a different hostname.

Check this out in the the latest nightly build. Mac OS X 10.4 or later required.

Play Sound

From time to time, someone opens a ticket in the Cyberduck Bug Tracker, requesting that a sound should be played once a download or upload is complete. I always close these tickets with a wontfix/worksforme resolution.

The workaround is to download Growl. After installation, restart Cyberduck and open the Growl Preference Pane in the System Preferences. Navigate to Applications → Cyberduck → Configure… → Notifications → Select a notification (e.g. Download) → Choose Play Sound…. Then pump up the volume of your speakers and transfer some files with Cyberduck.

Quick Look

Cyberduck 3 will feature Quick Look, as known in the Finder.app since Mac OS X 10.5. You can toggle Quick Look in a Cyberduck browser for any file using Command-Space Bar. A preview is rendered depending on a Quick Look Plugin available on your system for the given file type. Many file types like different image formats can be previewed with the bundled plugins in OS X and HTML is even rendered in the Quick Look preview panel.

Quick Look

Check this out in the the latest nightly build. Mac OS X 10.4 or later required.

Certificate Trust Management

I have recently changed the implementation to verify SSL certificates, which is used for secured FTP, WebDAV and Amazon S3 connections. Cyberduck 3 will honour the trust settings you can configure in Keychain.app and will display the certificate chain that fails validation upon connecting to a server. Previously, a custom dialog was shown which is now replaced by the same standard dialog (which allows editing the trust settings) used in Safari.app or Mail.app.

Certificate Trust Setting

Cyberduck 3.0 is expected to be released next month. The current nightly build (use with caution) is available for testing.

Support for WebDAV

The next major release of Cyberduck will support WebDAV. WebDAV, an acronym for Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning, is described as “…a set of extensions to the HTTP protocol which allows users to collaboratively edit and manage files on remote web servers”.

webdav

Although, the Finder.app does support WebDAV, first comparative tests show performance is much better in Cyberduck and browsing feels snappier. Because .mac is based on WebDAV, it will also be possible to access your iDisk using Cyberduck by mounting the URL http://idisk.mac.com/membername as described in this support document.

Cyberduck 3.0 is expected to be released later this next month. The current nightly build (use with caution) is available for testing.

New Bookmark interface

Continuing the series about new features in Cyberduck 3, which started with the Amazon S3 support announcement, I want to highlight a change to the user interface: Since Cyberduck has been available in 2003, it featured a drawer – the new user interface widget introduced with OS X 10.0 – to display the bookmarks. I have decided to change this in Cyberduck 3 and replace it with a ‘inline’ bookmark window as e.g. in Safari.

It features the following improvments:

  • Status. Shows a green bullet if the browser is connected to the remote host.
  • Search. The filter field you are used to in the browser allows to search within the bookmarks, too. It filters the bookmarks with the search string matching either the nickname or hostname.
  • History & Bonjour. A navigation bar at the top allows to select recent connections and to connect to remote hosts discovered via Bonjour/Zeroconf.

Bookmarks

Cyberduck 3.0 is expected to be released later this month. The current nightly build (use with caution) is available for testing.

Support for Amazon S3

The next major release of Cyberduck will support Amazon S3. I have integrated the excellent open source library JetS3t into Cyberduck. It allows you to transfer files to your S3 account and browse the S3 buckets and files in a hierarchical way as you are used to with other remote file systems supported by Cyberduck.

Amazon S3 Browser

Cyberduck 3.0 is expected to be released later this month. The current nightly build (use with caution) is available for testing.