1.0 Introduction

What's new in the interface:

In summary:
"If NetFinder v1.x is to MacOS 7.x, then NetFinder v2.0 is to MacOS 8.x"

In detail:

• The whole user interface is now in line with MacOS 8.x. NetFinder 2 is tightly following all the cool features of MacOS 8.5's Finder. (not all but most) Downloading files from the internet has never been so easy and transparent.
• Completely new "Partial File Window".
• Appearance Manager Savvy.
• Contextual Menu Support.
• Navigation Manager Support.
• "View Graphic" Window. (This feature along with View File and Edit in BBEdit will make NetFinder a really valuable tool for web publishers)

What's new in the features:

HTTP Protocol

• Support for HTTP directory listings. (only certain sites, eg <http://metalab.unc.edu/pub/>, <http://www.ozemail.com.au/~pli/netfinder/sw_bins/>)
• Support for downloading a HTTP URL/file. Resume download supported too. (Useful if you know the exact URL of say an update file on a HTTP site.)
• Support for FTP through a HTTP proxy. (only certain proxies)
• Support for HTTP servers that require Basic Authentication.

• Supports viewing of files in the Finder in a NetFinder listing window. (if that makes sense)
• Most Finder operations can be performed in NetFinder, namely Copy/Move/Rename etc. NetFinder's file listing support is also useful when viewing directories from certain file server volumes that usually result in items continually jumping around in the Finder. This often becomes very unproductive and can increase stress levels, I for one know how anoying it can get. Its no longer a problem if you use NetFinder.

• Support for One Time Password servers:
  
  • Clear Text version, eg Apples seeding FTP server.
  • Challenge version.
  • s/key support.
• Support for FTP Proxies that require Authentication.

• Support for configuring when NetFinder attempt to retry connecting to a busy server.
• Improved directory caching mechanism:
  
  • improved "security" of cached listings.
  • added directory caching options, just like your standard web browser. Namely, never cache / always cache / cache once per session.
• Support for "Recent Items", to access often visited sites.
• Support for "URL completion", so you only need to type in the first few characters of your sites hostname, then hit connect.
• MacBinary III support.
• Support for Apple's KeyChain Manager. You no longer have to fear unwanted eyes seeing your passwords, as the KeyChain Manager encrypts and stores all you passwords safely.
• Support for viewing files as a Graphic (if possible). eg view a JPEG, GIF, BMP etc. (Really useful if you are a web publisher, and you just want to see what a graphic looks like on the server, without having to download it to a specific place on your hard disk and launch yet another application that can handle viewing the graphic file.)
• Vastly improved the stability of NetFinder.
• Improved the speed of certain transfer operations.

• very easy to use Finder-like interface, including full Drag and Drop support.
• download, upload, delete, rename and move files and folders as easily as you would in the Finder.
• supports moving files to your Mac's disk and moving files around on a FTP site - very handy for Webmasters and Webmistresses!
• fully threaded operation for directory listings and file/folder transfers. The benefits of this approach are that you wait less and can do more at the same time - a valuable time-saving feature!
• on-the-fly encoding and decoding of Binhex and MacBinary files - the most popular file formats for storing Mac files on internet FTP sites. Since files are decoded on-the-fly, you don't require as much hard disk space. For example, an 8Mb binhex-encoded file will only require 6Mb of hard disk space.
• the ability to save and open bookmarks of your favourite FTP sites. Create bookmarks simply by dragging and dropping files or folder. Double click bookmarks to quickly connect to your favourite sites.
• directory listings are cached so you can navigate quickly through often visited sites. And if the listing is stale, you can easily get a fresh listing.
• can work with Internet Explorer or Netscape
• Internet Config savvy (NetFinder can function without IC but it works much better if IC is installed)
• supports a wide variety of FTP servers. Works with all popular FTP server software like wu-ftp, NetPresenz and Windows NT FTP server.
• customisable with a set of useful preferences
• and last but not least, you can continue downloading a file that has been partially downloaded instead of having to download the entire file again. This works even if you quit NetFinder or your Mac crashes and you have to restart! We call this "Partial File support". It's very cool. ;-)

Well, how many times have you started downloading a file to your local hard disk, and for some reason you couldn't finish it and you had to download the whole file again?

With NetFinder, assuming the server you are trying to get the file from supports partial files, you can transfer as little or as much as you like, whenever you feel like it, and later continue transferring the rest from where you left off. That's right, you can transfer a bit of a file today and continue another day.

This is especially useful when you want to transfer a file from a popular site (where you can only log in if you are lucky enough) but you are unable to transfer the whole file during one login session. It's also useful for transfering those multi megabyte (gigabyte?) files that no one has bothered to split up! ;-)

1.3 Explanation of terms

• the term directory means the same thing as folder. "Folder" tends to be used on Mac disks and "directory" on FTP sites.
• URL is Uniform Resource Location. It's the standard way to refer to any data or media on the internet. For FTP files and directories, URLs typically begin with "ftp://".
• "FTP site" and "FTP server" are used synonymously to refer to the machine which you connect to and then perform FTP operations on/with. For example, "deleting a file from the server" and "deleting a file from the FTP site" both mean deleting a file which resides on the FTP server's disk drive.

• Some servers do not give Y2K compliant years in their directory listings, so NetFinder uses a window to "best guess" the 4 digit year.
• NetFinder uses a window of 40 years if a 2 digit year is obtained from a server. ie 40-99 is assumed to be 1940-1999, and 00-39 is assumed to by 2000-2039.
• NetFinder stores dates as a 16bit number. ie up to the year 65536.

TIP: If the interface does not appear to display 4 digit years, this may be because you have not set the preference in the MacOS to display 4 digit years.
To display the century part of the year, you will need to go to the "Date & Time" control panel, then click on the "Date Formats" button. In the dialog that appears enable the "Show Century" check box. See picture below.