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(4.5 out of 5)
I've used a million FTP clients in my search for the best way to
upload and maintain all my websites, including MacMilitia.com. I've
always been disappointed by the lack of important features. And then
a new program called Interarchy caught my eye. Life will never be
quite the same.
Interarchy is more than just a simple FTP client; it's the FTP client that could! Previously known as Anarchie, it was renamed with this release due to the many new features. Interarchy includes both ftp uploads/downloads, http downloads, whois, finger, traceroute, ping, dnslookup, and more.
When you first open Interarchy, you get a handy "Default Interface", which allows you to jump to just about anywhere on the internet. It includes buttons to open your email client, web browser, telnet program, and news reader with a single click. You can also run most of Interarchy's internal features from the Default Interface. You can also design your own interface, or "wand", with Interarchy WandForge.
FTP in Interarchy is handled in a very Mac, Finder-like way -- all the FTP directories show up in list-views like the Mac OS. However, it doesn't support contextual menus, one of my favorite OS8+ features. In general, I like Interarchy's FTP options. I really wish you could copy/dupicate files and folders on a website, though. That would really be nice.
Interarchy has some cool features not commonly found in other FTP clients, such as FTP mirror upload and HTTP mirror download. FTP mirror upload allows you to choose a local folder to mirror exactly to a destination folder on your website. The destination folder will look exactly as your local folder does. With HTTP mirror download, you specify a website to download all files from, and all those linked from it.
If you ever need to do any kind of network checks, Interarchy has some nice tools. It's really easy to "ping" a server to see if it's running. You can also run traceroutes, and follow the path your queries take to go to any server. Are you wondering what the IP address of a website is? Just use the Lookup command, and enter the domain name. Wondering who owns a domain name, or if it's available? Use the whois command; it's really easy! All these features aren't much on their own, but are great when thrown together into one program, with a nice, easy-to-use interface.
One last thing I must mention. Interarchy has excellent integration with BBEdit. BBEdit's built-in FTP isn't that great. Interarchy fills the hole with tight integration. You can select a file in Interarchy, select "Edit with BBEdit" (or press command-J), and it'll open it directly into BBEdit. When you save from BBEdit, it goes back to Interarchy and uploads the new file automatically. To put it simply, it rocks! I use it constantly for MacMilitia.com's many editing needs.
All in all, Interarchy is a great program. I have few complaints, and many praises. Kudos to the authors, Peter N Lewis and Andrew Tomazos!
John Norton does all of his MacMilitia.com webmastering via an Interarchy-BBEdit combination, and loves it to death.
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