The FTP Panel is a panel that sits docked at the left side of EditPad’s window. You can make it visible by selecting FTP Panel in the View menu. You can dock the panel elsewhere by dragging its caption bar or its tab.The FTP Panel is a panel that sits docked at the left side of EditPad’s window. You can make it visible by selecting FTP Panel in the View menu. You can dock the panel elsewhere by dragging its caption bar or its tab.
The tree view at the top of the FTP Panel shows all the FTP servers EditPad Pro is currently connected to. EditPad Pro can be connected to any number of FTP servers at the same time. You can transfer files between your PC and all the connected servers simultaneously. Obviously, this will only be practical with a high-speed Internet connection. The tree at the top also shows an upload and download queue for each server below the server’s node. You can resize the server tree by dragging the splitter bar immediately below the server tree, above the toolbar with the open, download and upload buttons.
The tree at the bottom shows the folder structure of the FTP server you selected in the list of servers at the top. If you click on another server, the folder view will be replaced instantly. You can do so at any time, even when EditPad Pro is still retrieving part of the folder structure. The retrieval will continue in the background.
By default, the FTP Panel shows all folders and files on the selected FTP server. Since the list of files may be too long to work comfortably, you can apply various filters to make the FTP Panel show only those files you’re interested in.
Many FTP client have a switch that lets you choose whether to upload and download files in ASCII or binary mode. In binary mode, the FTP client uploads or downloads an identical copy of the file. In ASCII mode, the FTP client and server will attempt to convert the file between the client and server operating systems. When using a Windows FTP client to upload a text file to a Linux server, for example, Windows-style line breaks will be converted to UNIX-style line breaks when uploading a file, and the other way around when downloading a file.
EditPad Pro always uploads and downloads files in binary mode. You’ll always get an exact copy of what’s on the server and you’ll always put an exact copy of the file back onto the server. Unlike many other applications, EditPad Pro transparently handles Windows, UNIX, and classic Macintosh text files. Still, you should be careful when uploading files to Linux or UNIX servers. A CGI script, for example, may abort with a mysterious 500 server error if you upload it with Windows-style line breaks onto a web server running Linux. The solution is to select Convert|Line Break Style|To UNIX (LF only) in EditPad Pro’s menu before uploading the file. You can also save the file on your Windows PC with UNIX-style line breaks, so you need to do the conversion only once. You can set the default for new files in the File Type Encoding settings.
Click the Connect to FTP button to connect to an FTP server. Enter the server’s host name (e.g. ftp.mydomain.com), port, your login or user name and your password. You can also choose whether EditPad Pro should remember your password. EditPad Pro supports all the popular methods for securing FTP connections. You can select the one your server uses from the Encryption drop-down list. If you’re not sure which method your server uses, the port number is often a good indication.
Select IPv4 or IPv6 if you know which Internet Protocol version your FTP server runs on. Select “Auto” if you don’t. But “Auto” isn’t guaranteed to work. It can fail if the server’s domain publishes both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses but the FTP server can only be reached via IPv6. If EditPad can't connect to your server at all and you've already tried all the encryption options then try selecting IPv4 or IPv6 and retry the various encryption options.
To connect to an FTP server, you need to enter a username and password. To connect to an SSH (SFTP) server, you need to enter a username and use one of three possible authentication methods. The first option is to enter a password. The second option is to tick the “keyboard-interactive authentication” checkbox. The third option is to provide a private key. Which method you need depends on whether your SSH server requires password authentication, keyboard-interactive authentication, or private key authentication.
Keyboard-interactive authentication results in a prompt during the connection. Usually this prompt asks for a password. The actual prompt depends on what the server asks from EditPad.
Private key authentication requires you to import a private key or select a previously imported one. Click the (...) button next to the “private key” setting to access EditPad’s private key storage. Click the Import button to import a private key. The first time you do this you will be prompted for a password (and again to avoid typos). This password is used to encrypt all the keys in EditPad’s private key storage. After importing the key, click the Select button to select that key and close the key storage dialog. You can connect to another server using the same key simply by selecting the key in the “private key” drop-down list in the FTP connection dialog. You can connect to another server using a different key by clicking the (...) button and importing another key. EditPad will ask for the private key storage password once per EditPad session at the moment when it needs to encrypt a key you’re importing or decrypt a key you need to connect to a server. The keys are stored with the rest of EditPad’s settings, which is in %APPDATA%\JGsoft\EditPad Pro 8 for normal installs, and EditPad’s installation folder for portable installs. If you forget your password then the EditPad’s private key storage becomes inaccessible. In that case, exit EditPad Pro, delete all the key files, and restart EditPad Pro to start with a fresh private key storage. You will be prompted for a new password when you import the first key.
Click the Proxy Server button if your PC can only connect to FTP or SSH servers via a proxy. Proxy settings are shared between all FTP connection settings. Proxy settings for FTP connections are separate from proxy settings for HTTP connections (such as for downloading schemes in the file type configuration). EditPad supports HTTP, SOCKSv4, and SOCKSv5 proxy servers. If you select “SOCKSv5 + DNS” then EditPad sends your server’s domain name to the proxy server, leaving it to the proxy server to resolve the domain. Otherwise EditPad lets your PC connect to its DNS server to resolve the domain and then sends the IP address to the proxy to make the connection.
Optionally, you can also enter a description for the FTP server. This description will appear in history lists instead of the default username@hostname.
The initial directory is the directory that EditPad Pro navigates to when you first connect to the FTP server. If you don’t specify an initial directory then EditPad Pro lets the FTP server choose the initial directory. If you turn on the option “use initial directory as root” then you can only access the initial directory and its subdirectories. You won’t be able to access the directory’s parent or sibling directories. This option is available whether you specified the initial directory or not.
If you have a slow internet connection then you can tell EditPad Pro to keep a cached copy of the FTP server’s directory listings. This speeds up future connections to the same server. You may want to turn off this feature if you often modify files on the FTP server outside of EditPad Pro, as that will cause the cached listings to be out of date, which may be confusing.
If EditPad Pro cannot retrieve an FTP server’s directory listings, try toggling the “passive FTP” option. While passive FTP is usually preferred, not all servers support it.
If a server times out the connection quickly then you can tell EditPad Pro to send “no operation (NOOP)” commands to the server every 30 seconds. Not all servers reset the time-out in response to NOOP commands.
Setting the SFTP block size to 128 KB speeds up SFTP connections. But this may prevent EditPad Pro from transferring files to an older SFTP server if it does not support 128 KB blocks. 32 KB is the largest block size that every SFTP server must support.
You can use the “backups on server” setting to have EditPad Pro rename the existing file to a backup file whenever it is about to overwrite a file on your FTP server. If the backup file already exists, it is replaced by the new backup. The History panel does not track this backup copy on the server.
You can speed up working with files on an FTP server by specifying a folder for local backups. Whenever you open a file from the FTP server, EditPad Pro writes a copy of that file to the local backup folder. When you save the file, EditPad Pro saves both the local backup and uploads the new file to the FTP server. If you enabled backup copies on the Save Files page in the Preferences then EditPad Pro keeps backups of the local copy of the file when you save it to FTP. This allows you to use the History panel with files opened from FTP. It will show the local backup copies. If you enabled working copies in the Save Files Preferences then the working copies are saved in the local backup folder of each FTP server. Working copies are never uploaded to the server.
EditPad Pro does not delete the local backup copy when you close a file you opened via FTP. Turn on “load unchanged files from local backups” to read the local backup copy of a file instead of downloading the file from the server if the file’s size and time stamp on the server is still the same as that of the local backup copy.
In the “translate FTP folders into HTTP URLs” box, you can enter a list of FTP folder paths and their corresponding HTTP URLs. Enter one folder=URL pair per line, separating the folder and URL with an equals sign. The folder must be a full path. When you select the View|Browser command when you’re editing a file in that folder, EditPad Pro will replace the folder path in the file’s path with the URL. E.g. if you specify /usr/home/me/public_html/=http://www.mydomain.com and you’re editing the file /usr/home/me/public_html/subfolder/file.html then EditPad Pro will open the URL http://www.mydomain.com/subfolder/file.html
When you want to connect to the same server again, you can select it from the Connect button’s drop-down menu. If the password was remembered, EditPad Pro will connect to the server instantly. Otherwise, it will ask you for the password.
You can connect to as many servers as you like. Connecting to another server does not break previous connections. Simply click on a connection in the top half of the FTP panel to see the file listings. You can also connect to the same server more than once if you use a different login name. Since a server may restrict the number of connections from a single computer, you may have to disconnect from the server before reconnecting with a different login. EditPad Pro does not impose any restrictions on the number of simultaneous connections to an FTP server.
Click the Disconnect from FTP button to break EditPad Pro’s connection with the selected FTP server. Any pending uploads or downloads will be aborted. The server will be removed from the list of servers in the top half of the FTP panel.
If the FTP server or a network outage breaks the connection, the server will remain listed in the FTP panel. EditPad Pro won’t notice that the connection was broken until you try to upload or download another file. When you do, EditPad Pro will automatically try to reconnect to the server every 10 seconds until either it succeeds, or you click the Disconnect button.
The Connect to FTP button will automatically keep a history of the last 16 FTP servers that you connected to. If you connect to lots of FTP servers, and use some more frequently than others, you can add the FTP servers you use frequently to your list of favorite FTP servers. To add a server to the list, connect to it. Then click on the downward pointing arrow next to the Favorites button, and click on the Add Connected FTP Server item. To connect to a favorite FTP server, select it from the Favorites button’s drop-down menu.
Aborts all uploads and downloads to and from the selected server that are currently pending or in progress.
Click the Open from FTP button to open all selected files for editing. EditPad Pro will instantly create new, empty tabs for the files. The files are added to the FTP server’s download queue. While a file downloads, its text will appear in EditPad Pro bit by bit. You can start editing the downloaded portion right away. The remainder of the file will be appended as it is downloaded. If you close a tab before the file is downloaded, that file’s download will be aborted.
You cannot open entire folders from FTP like you can open entire folders in the Explorer Panel. If you click Open from FTP with a folder selected, that folder’s node will simply be expanded. EditPad Pro will retrieve the list of subfolders and files, but won’t actually download the files themselves.
EditPad Pro will remember that you opened the files from FTP. When you use File|Save or File|Save All, or you confirm the save question asked by File|Close and similar commands, EditPad Pro will automatically upload the file back to the FTP server, overwriting the original file. To save the file on your computer, use File|Save As instead. Once you save the file on your own computer, EditPad Pro will not automatically upload it to the FTP server when you save.
The drop-down menu of the open button shows a list of files that you have recently opened from this server. Select a file from the drop-down menu to open it again.
The Add to Project from FTP button opens a file from FTP just like the Open from FTP button does. If the active project is unmanaged then there is no difference between the two. The file then becomes part of the project regardless of which command you use.
If the active project is a managed project then Add to Project from FTP makes the newly opened file a part of the project. When you open the project again, EditPad Pro will try to download the file from FTP again. It will prompt to reconnect to the server if you’re not connected when reopening the project. Open from FTP opens the file as an outside file. Then the file is not opened when you close and reopen the managed project.
If you often edit particular files on this server, you can add them to the list of favorite files via the Favorites button next to the Open button. EditPad Pro keeps a list of favorite files for each server that you added to your favorite servers, and each server that is remembered by the Connect to FTP button. These lists are separate. To open a particular favorite file, first connect to the server the file is on, and then select the file from the favorite files on that server.
Tailing a file on FTP is very convenient for dealing with files that may be slow to download entirely, that may be updated continuously, or that have the information you want at the end of the file. Log files are a prime example. Tailing these files on FTP instead of opening them can save you a lot of download time by downloading only the end of the file. It can keep you up-to-date by continuously reloading that tail end.
The Tail on FTP command shows the same dialog box as the File|Tail command. All the options work in the same way via FTP. Depending on the speed of your FTP connection, you may choose a smaller tail end to load and a larger reload interval. The interval is paused while the updated tail end is downloaded. So if you set a 10-second interval but it takes 2 seconds to download the new tail end of the file then you’ll see the file update every 12 seconds. This ensures that the file remains workable if the download time were to exceed the interval.
Click the Download button to download the selected files to disk, without opening them for editing in EditPad Pro. If you selected one file, EditPad Pro will ask you where and with which name you want to save it. If you selected more than one file, EditPad Pro will ask you for the folder where you want to save the selected files. All files will be downloaded with the same name as they have on the FTP server.
Click the Upload File button to upload the file you’re currently editing to the FTP server. If you selected a folder in the FTP panel, the file will be uploaded into that folder. If you selected a file in the FTP panel, the file you’re editing will be uploaded into the same folder as the selected file. EditPad Pro will ask you which name you want the uploaded file to have on the FTP server.
If the file you’re uploading was untitled, EditPad Pro will change the tab’s caption to the file name you used to upload the file. If you later modify the file and use File|Save or File|Save All, or you confirm the save question asked by File|Close and similar commands, EditPad Pro will automatically upload the file back to the FTP server, overwriting the original file. To save the file on your computer, use File|Save As instead. Once you save the file on your own computer, or if it already had been saved on your own computer before you uploaded it, EditPad Pro will not automatically upload it to the FTP server when you save.
Click the Upload Project button to upload all files in the current project. If you selected a folder in the FTP panel, the files will be uploaded into that folder. If you selected a file in the FTP panel, the project’s files will be uploaded into the same folder as the selected file.
If one or more of the files in the project are untitled, EditPad Pro will ask you for a name for those files. Files that were previously uploaded or saved will be uploaded with the name they already have. Files that were untitled when you uploaded them will be automatically uploaded when you save them, just like when uploading a single untitled file.
Click the Upload Project button to upload files that you aren’t editing in EditPad Pro. EditPad Pro will show an open file dialog to select the files to upload. You can select multiple files to be uploaded. If you selected a folder in the FTP panel, the files will be uploaded into that folder. If you selected a file in the FTP panel, the files will be uploaded into the same folder as the selected file.
Should you use the Upload from Disk file to upload a file that you’re editing in EditPad Pro, then the copy of the file on disk will be uploaded. If the file has unsaved changes in EditPad Pro, those changes won’t appear in the uploaded file.
Click the Create Folder button to create a new folder on the FTP server. If you selected a folder in the FTP panel, the new folder will become a subfolder of the selected folder. If you selected a file in the FTP panel, the folder will become a subfolder of the folder that holds the selected file.
EditPad Pro automatically updates the contents of a folder shown in the files and folders tree on the FTP panel whenever you use EditPad to upload, rename, or delete a file via FTP in that folder. If you use another way to add or delete files on the FTP server, then EditPad won’t show those changes on the FTP panel. To make EditPad Pro check for changes in a particular folder, select that folder or a file in that folder and invoke the Refresh Folder command via the context menu.
If you regularly use another FTP client, you may want to turn off the option to cache directory listings when you connect to the FTP server in EditPad. Then EditPad will refresh all folder listings each time you connect to the FTP server.
Rename or move the selected file or folder. You will be prompted for the new name or path.
If your FTP server is running on a UNIX or Linux host, select the File Permissions item in the context menu if you want to change the permissions on the selected file. These are the permissions that you can set via the chmod command in UNIX or Linux.
To delete a file or folder, right-click on it and select Delete in the context menu. Most FTP servers will not allow you to delete a folder until you’ve deleted all of its files and subfolders. You can delete multiple files and folders by selecting them all, and then right-clicking on one of the selected items.