I realise that Filezilla is still very much in early beta and as a result is very very buggy on the Mac. I’m constantly having issues with Filezilla crashing whenever I attempt to use the breadcrumb folder navigation. It seems that when I try to return to the root of the server the entire application fails and I get the spinning beachball of death before being prompted to reopen Filezilla because, guess what, it failed.
I noticed another issue today when using Filezilla. It doesn’t handle hidden files very well at all.
While doing a bit of web development this afternoon, I had to edit my server’s .htaccess file. For security purposes this file is hidden when you view your server’s root using Filezilla. In order to display the .htaccess file you need to click on Server and select ‘Display Hidden Files’ within Filezilla’s menu bar. Once you have activated this feature, you should notice the .htaccess file is viewable within the right pane (the right pane contains the files hosted on your server). All good so far.
I downloaded the .htaccess file to a folder named htaccess on my desktop. But when I enter the directory via Finder there is no file to be seen. I thought I may have made a mistake so I downloaded the file again, and again. Nothing showing. I had a rummage around Finder’s preferences and checked the view options but there was no option there to display any hidden files or folders. Eventually I opened up Textmate, my text editor, and noticed that there is an option to ‘open hidden files’ when you browse for a file to open. I opened the file and did my editing and saved the file.
Okay, so this isn’t ideal but at least I managed to edit the file after going around the roundabout way.
Now I want to re-upload the .htaccess file using Filezilla.
Filezilla doesn’t want to play though. It doesn’t display the hidden file locally on my Mac. This is because Filezilla inherits the Mac’s default Finder settings with regards to displaying hidden files and folders. Brilliant, I love feeling secure on my Mac!! It really helps my productivity!
So how do I upload a hidden file?
I googled around the Inter Web and came across a post by Rob Griffiths about running a terminal command to display hidden files/folders on your Mac. The post advises you to open terminal and to run the command - defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES -. Rob states that you will need to restart Finder in order for the changes to come to effect.
To make the command take effect, you need to restart the Finder. One way to do this is to hold down the Option key, then click and hold on the Finder icon in the Dock. When the contextual menu appears, select Relaunch and the Finder will restart.
If you tire of the dimmed folders and other downsides, just open Terminal and repeat the command, but change YES to NO, then press Return again. You’ll need to relaunch the Finder again, but when you do, everything will be back to normal.
So does this work? Yup, it sure does. And the proof is in the pudding. The pudding in this case being this screenshot of the .htaccess file on display within Filezilla’s local view (left pane within Filezilla).
This is fustrating as hell though. Now every system file is on full display. I only want specific files to be shown and I also want more control and to be able to interact with Finder in a more intituative manner. As far as I can tell there is no option to enable the display of hidden files for specific local directories. This is a right nightmare. There must be an application out there which can alter the display of files and folders in a much simplier way than running commands such as the one Rob posted?
And there is…
Show Hidden Files 1.5 is a small application which executes code similar to Rob’s to either display hidden files or hide displayed files. When you execute the file it refreshes screen so that is a bit annoying but only a little bit.
Jason Guthrie encountered the same exact problem with displaying .htaccess files. The difference between his encounter and mine is that he actually wrote an automator script to counteract the problem.
Apologies for going on a bit of a rant and I realise that it’s not entirely Filezilla’s fault. It would however make my life a lot simplier if Filezilla provided an option to overide the display of local hidden files.