1.0 Introduction

• 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! ;-)

1.2 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.