If you’re in need of an open source FTP / SFTP browser than Cyberduck is for you. Being a web developer I use an FTP client daily and currently Cyberduck is what I am using. If you’ve ever used an FTP client of any sort you will find no learning curve on Cyberduck what so ever. It just works and it’s easy. Pictured above is the main window you would see when launching Cyberduck and any action you would need to perform is found in the top menu bar of the program window.

To start you would want to open a new connection and selecting Open Connection will drop down a new screen that allows you to enter all of the connection details (pictured below). After you’ve entered the details in hit connect and you are on your way. As a word of caution when I used the program this way I was not able to save my information so this route is better for those once-off connections.

If you would rather store connections that you use all the time then Bookmarks will be what you need. Selecting Bookmarks from the menu bar will slide out another window from the program displaying all of your current bookmarks as well as giving you the options to add, edit or delete.

When you add a bookmark from this window a similar screen to the Open Connection menu item appears with the main difference being the option to enter a nickname for the connection. This nickname will be what appears in the bookmarks window as well as the Quick Connect drop down menu item.

To access any FTP connection you have saved as a bookmark you can either double click the connections name from the Bookmarks tab or select it from the Quick Connect drop down menu. This will create the connection to the server and you will see your directory path usually starting at the root unless you specified a path in the Path field of the New Connection screen. For example if you would always want to connect to the publich html folder for uploading web pages you would add the /public_html into the path field and every new connection will open in this folder instead.

From here uploading files is as easy as drag and drop. Select the files or folders you would like to upload and drag them into the program window. A progress window will appear showing if the upload was a success or failure and give appropriate messages.

I have just covered the basic features of Cyberduck and how to create a connection. The program itself contains many more features and is quite powerful as an FTP connection. There is also a widget available for download from the web site, I have not used the widget so I cannot give any opinion on it.

Cyberduck is just one of many FTP clients available for the Mac. The program was the first I used on the Mac and its ease of use made me stick with it and not try other programs as I currently have no need to. It is a great application for general FTP use and the fact that it is Open Source and free makes it a great bargain as well.

This is an impromptu post but based on circumstances that occurred earlier today I decided to make it. For reasons beyond this blog I needed to boot my old Windows PC today to retrieve some information from it. It has been a couple of weeks since I last turned the machine on but at that time there were no warnings of failures or anything out of the ordinairy. When I turned the machine on today it continually rebooted time and time again, I thought all information was lost. But then I remembered I had my trusty Mac and an external hard drive enclosure in which I can try to connect the drive from my PC to my MacBook Pro in order to retrieve the data.

I removed the non-booting drive from my PC — scope is beyond this article — and set it up inside my external hard drive enclosure. I recently purchased an enclosure along with an internal drive as a way of making my own external drive. This route is a lot cheaper than buying one of the prebuilt solutions and is quite easy to assemble. Anyway, I removed the drive I was using for backups (which is an upcoming article) and attached the drive from my PC. I connected this new drive to my MacBook Pro and instantly it was recognized and the drive icon appeared on my Desktop.

I was still worried for a bit because this drive was formatted as NTFS, a filesystem that Mac’s are not supposed to be able to see. But luckily enough I was able to not only see the data on the drive but move the needed files over to the Mac in a matter of seconds. It really is as easy as copying and pasting or dragging and dropping.

When you are done with the drive make sure to unmount it first by dragging it to the trash can. This will change the trash icon to an eject icon and you will hear the hard drive power down letting you know it is safe to be disconnected from the Mac.

I will discuss this process in more detail at a later date but wanted to inform everyone that it is possible and extremely easy to set up as long as you have the equipment available — which included a screw driver and a external hard drive enclosure with cables to connect to the Mac (these cables will come with the enclosure).

In Part 1 of this two part series I talked about using the keyboard shortcuts for taking screenshots. Part 2 of this series will deal with using Grab, an application/utility built into Mac OSX.

Grab can be found in your Applications folder under the Utilities folder. An easier way of launching is simply typing Grab into Finder and selecting it from the list that appears. There are other ways of launching this as well but I won’t get into them here. Find a way that suits you best.

The main features you’ll use of Grab is found in the Capture menu item found in the menu bar (these options also have keyboard shortcuts which can be seen beside the option).

As you can see the first three options are similar to the options available to you from the keyboard shortcuts. Because of this I do not think they need any more explanation here. The keyboard shortcuts change while Grab is launched but essentially do the same job. The difference is Grab has a window that opens up letting you know you are taking a screenshot and gives you some instructions on what you should do.

Two other main differences between Grab and the general shortcuts are that Grab puts the screenshot into it’s own window; the file is not saved to the Desktop or to the clipboard. It is up to you to decide what you want to do with the screenshot from the window it appears in. The other difference is that you have the option of selecting Grab to also capture the mouse pointer and the type of pointer that it will capture. To enable this option you will have to select it from the Preferences menu found under Grab in the menu bar.

This brings us to the last option on the Capture menu - Timed Screen. Timed Screen is what definitely sets Grab apart from the general keyboard shortcuts that most of us should be used to. It is also one of the main screen capture techniques that I use for grabbing screens for this site. By selecting Timed Screen from the Capture menu a window will appear with the option to Start The Tiimer and this will start a ten second countdown. When the countdown finishes anything that appears on the screen will be captured into the image.

Using this technique is how I am able to get screenshots of open menus and different elements that are not set windows or screens. This is also how you would capture the mouse pointer that you set using the Preferences menu.

Other Screenshot methods:
In the comments to Part 1, fcodc from Mac Recon mentioned a widget called Screenshot Plus which he uses for the majority of his screenshots. I have yet to use this widget so try it out for yourself to see what it’s capable of — I will try to experiment with it soon and post my findings.

In Mac OSX there are two built-in ways of taking screenshots, the first being keyboard commands and the second being an application/utility called Grab. Today we will look at the keyboard shortcuts.

If you are venturing to the Mac from the Windows world you probably noticed the lack of the “Print Screen” key on the keyboard. In Windows to take screenshots you would hit the Print Screen key to grab the entire window or Alt+Print Screen to grab just the active window. Mac OSX doesn’t have that feature but has many more built in which offer a wider array of options.

Command+Shift+3 will take a picture of the entire screen and put the output directly onto your desktop. If you hold the Control key down before hitting the 3 the screenshot will be stored to your Clipboard.

Command+Shift+4 will turn your cursor into a crosshairs icon which will allow you to make a selection, whatever is inside the grey box becomes your screenshot (seen in the picture below). If you hold the Control key down while making your selection the file will go onto the Clipboard instead of the desktop.

Command+Shift+4 then Spacebar will turn your cursor into a camera which then allows you to take a screenshot of the current screen and place the results on your desktop. Holding down the Control key while doing this will put the screenshot onto the Clipboard instead of the desktop for use elsewhere.

I use these commands while creating the screenshots for I’m A Mac, I also use Grab for some of the more advanced screenshots and this will be discussed in the next article.

A definite must have application for any owner of a Mac is AppZapper. In my previous post Installing DMG Files I mentioned that installing applications on the Mac is as simple as dragging the application into the Application folder, unfortunately uninstalling an application isn’t as easy. Enter AppZapper:

Not only does AppZapper have one of the coolest looking icons it’s also one solid little program. Most installations on a Mac will not only put files into your Application folder but also store preferences, support files and other types of files that you would have to dig around to find to completely remove the program (programs do this on Windows as well and their uninstalls also do not remove the program completely). With the use of AppZapper all you do is drag your application icon onto the AppZapper drop window (seen below) and the program does the rest.

From the AppZapper web site: “Drag one or more unwanted apps onto AppZapper and watch as it finds all the extra files and lets you delete them with a single click. A slick safety system remembers which apps you want to keep safe, and the log tracks all the files you’ve zapped. In one Zap you’ll understand it. In two you’ll fall in love.”

AppZapper allows you to try the program with five free zaps (I’ve currently used two). If you like the program it costs $12.95 US to buy. For those power users out there who like to install and try new applications all the time AppZapper is the perfect tool for helping to rid of all the extra files when you realize you no longer need some of your applications.