Just a short, simple blog for Bob to share his thoughts.
31 January 2013 • by Bob • FTP
For this installment in my series about FTP clients, I want to take a look at BitKinex 3, which is an FTP client from Barad-Dur, LLC. For this blog I used BitKinex 3.2.3, and it is available from the following URL:
At the time of this blog post, BitKinex 3 is available for free, and it contains a bunch of features that make it an appealing FTP and WebDAV client.
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Fig. 1 - The Help/About dialog in BitKinex 3. |
When you open BitKinex 3, it shows four connection types (which it refers to as Data Sources): FTP, HTTP/WebDAV, SFTP/SSH, and My Computer. The main interface is analogous to what you would expect in a Site Manager with other FTP clients - you can define new data sources (connections) to FTP sites and websites:
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Fig. 2 - The main BitKinex 3 window. |
Creating an FTP data source is pretty straight-forward, and there are a fair number of options that you can specify. What's more, data sources can have individual options specified, or they can inherit from a parent note.
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Fig. 3 - Creating a new FTP data source. |
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Fig. 4 - Specifying the options for an FTP data source. |
Once a data source has connected, a child window will open and display the folder trees for your local and remote content. (Note: there are several options for customizing how each data source can be displayed.)
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Fig. 5 - An open FTP data source. |
BitKinex 3 has support for command-line automation, which is pretty handy if you do a lot of scripting like I do. Documentation about automating BitKinex 3 from the command line is available on the BitKinex website at the following URL:
BitKinex Command Line Interface
That being said, the documentation is a bit sparse and there are few examples, so I didn't attempt anything ambitious from a command line during my testing.
BitKinex 3 has built-in support for FTP over SSL (FTPS) supports both Explicit and Implicit FTPS. To specify the FTPS mode, you need to choose the correct mode from the Security drop-down menu for your FTP data source.
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Fig. 6 - Specifying the FTPS mode. |
Once you have established an FTPS connection through BitKinex 3, the user experience is the same as it is for a standard FTP connection.
True FTP hosts are not supported natively, and even though BitKinex 3 allows you to send a custom command after a data source has been opened, I could not find a way to send a custom command before sending user credentials, so true FTP hosts cannot be used.
BitKinex 3's login settings allow you to specify the virtual host name as part of the user credentials by using syntax like "ftp.example.com|username" or "ftp.example.com\username", so you can use virtual FTP hosts with BitKinex 3.
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Fig. 7 - Specifying an FTP virtual host. |
This concludes my quick look at a few of the FTP features that are available with BitKinex 3, and here are the scorecard results:
Client Name | Directory Browsing | Explicit FTPS | Implicit FTPS | Virtual Hosts | True HOSTs | Site Manager | Extensibility |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
BitKinex 3.2.3 | Rich | Y | Y | Y | N | Y | N/A |
Note: I could not find anyway to extend the functionality of BitKinex 3; but as I mentioned earlier, it does support command-line automation. |
That wraps it up this blog - BitKinex 3 is pretty cool FTP client with a lot of options, and I think that my next plan of action is to try out the WebDAV features that are available in BitKinex 3. ;-)
Note: This blog was originally posted at http://blogs.msdn.com/robert_mcmurray/
Tags: FTP, FTPS, FTP Clients, SSL