Filezilla

by Curtiss   |   last updated April 22, 2012   |   Software ·

Filezilla is another extremely popular, full-featured application available in the open-sourced freeware market.

Filezilla is an amazing FTP client available for all three platforms. Having used many different programs on Linux and Windows to handle my FTP needs, I can honestly say that Filezilla offers almost everything those apps offer, and more. There is only one application I’ve ever used that offers more functionality than Filezilla. That application is GlobalScape’s CuteFTP. The only thing CuteFTP really does better than Filezilla is handle broken downloads and background processes (CuteFTP will continue processing the queue in the background even after you close the program).

None of the other applications I’ve used, including Internet Explorer, Konqueror, WSFTP and many more, offer the functionality and ease-of-use that Filezilla offers.

Features
Filezilla offers multiple options to transfer files, including drag-and-drop, double-click and a pretty little button. You can easily assign default editors for any file extension you transfer through Filezilla. Filezilla offers to resume items in your queue that have not finished.

You can easily “QuickConnect” to a site by simply typing in the address, username and password, or you can set up site profiles. The site profiles allow you to specify which remote directory you want to connect to by default and which local directory you want to start from; they allow you to specify what actions you want Filezilla to take when it encounters files in both locations (“always overwrite”, “overwrite if newer”, “overwrite if different”, “skip”, etc.); they allow you to specify which file extensions are transferred as ASCII and binary, set the default charset, and so much more.

Interface

Filezilla allows you to choose from multiple viewing options. You can toggle the directory tree on both the remote and local viewing panes. You can tile the viewing panes vertically or horizontally. You can swap the local and remote panes (placing the remote on the left side and the local on the right side). You can set Filezilla to always place directories on top of files in the file list, sort them in order with the files, or simply “prioritize” the directories (keeping them on top when viewing items in ascending order and on bottom when viewing in descending order).

You can even filter the list of files to show/hide specific items in the file list.

Performance

Filezilla performs extremely well and extremely efficiently. It automatically attempts to resume failed processes (it will try at least three times before giving up and moving on to the next). It automatically attempts to reconnect to a server when it’s disconnected. It transfers the files very quickly with very low overhead. With Filezilla, you are able to transfer entire directories at a time and you are able to delete directories without having to empty them first.

Missing Features

At the moment, the latest version of Filezilla is missing the ability to edit files within Filezilla. In previous versions of Filezilla, you could set a default editor for all files, and then set specific editors for each file extension. Unfortunately, that feature has not yet been implemented in Filezilla 3.

However, Filezilla 2 is still available and can be installed flawlessly side-by-side with Filezilla 3. The editing feature in Filezilla 2 is not quite perfect, as it doesn’t allow you to re-upload the edited files until you close out the file you’re working on. There has been talk that that will be improved in Filezilla 3 once the ability to edit files has been reimplemented.

The only other feature that I’d like to see in Filezilla, as mentioned above, is the ability to run processes in the background. It is really nice in CuteFTP to be able to open a site, grab a huge list of files, and then close the program, forgetting that the transfer is even occurring. In CuteFTP (and this is the last thing I will say on the matter, since I do not intend for this to become a review of CuteFTP), the transfers even resume automatically after restarting your computer.

Downloading Filezilla

Filezilla is available for download from SourceForge. You can view screenshots, find the download links, read more information and peruse the forums over at Filezilla’s official Web site.