Dear Everyone,
I know the mindfreezing bore that long, self-lauding speeches are apt to provoke, so I want to apologize right away for what is sure to happen in this post.
Because today is a BIG DAY with a HIP HIP…!
When some two years ago we set out to making the perfect file manager, we had a vision of this magical tool that you can use for anything you want to do with files. Anything. We didn’t actually write a list (none of that fancy business management behavior here), but we had like an image imprinted on our corneas that never faded through this time.
ForkLift 1.7 is not yet the true perfection we seek – but that’s because we need challenges for the future versions as well. What version 1.7 is though, is ForkLift’s coming of age.
On one hand, it feels like ForkLift is stepping in adulthood, because May 31 happened to be the second anniversary of the release of ForkLift 1.0. The fact that we’re still around after two years means that ForkLift successfully passed the first scrutiny of the Mac community, and not only survived, but has become by now a well-established application, with a large and active userbase.
On the other hand, this release marks the point where we have, after many detours and 15 released builds, reached a point where can tick off the last core functions from our imaginary list. What were these you might ask?
- Two Panes (1.0)
- FTP, SFTP (1.0)
- Amazon S3 (1.0)
- Bluetooth (1.0)
- Live preview (1.0)
- Remote editing (1.0)
- Tabs (1.0)
- Favorites (1.0)
- Archives (1.0)
- Spotlight (1.0)
- Filters (1.0)
- Application Deleter (1.0)
- Droplets (1.1)
- Batch Rename (1.1)
- FXP copy (1.1)
- Split/Combine. (1.1)
- WebDAV (1.2)
- QuickLook (1.5)
- Favorite Groups (1.5)
- Synch Browsing (1.5)
- Copy URL (1.5.3)
- Single pane mode (1.6)
- Keyboard control (1.6)
ForkLift 1.7 is now adding to the list the following great features:
Folder Synchronization
This feature will synchronize the contents of two folders located in different locations. ForkLift does one-way synching, meaning there is always a source folder, the contents of which are synched to a target folder. Sync always uses a dual pane view, with the active pane as the source folder. Needless to say, synching works in your local folders, on your local network, or any FTP/WebDAV/Amazon S3 connection. And yes, there’s even a bonus: sync will also work in FXP mode
Merge
As a byproduct of the synchronization feature, we are proud to present, for the first time on the Mac: a proper Merge operation for folders, local and remote. The standard behavior in OS X -i.e. simply overwriting existing folders when the a folder with the same name is copied to its location- has been baffling switchers for a long time.
Open in Terminal
A surprise goodie we weren’t sure could make the 1.7 release. Open in Terminal is available under the File menu, or in the right-click menu, and causes a terminal window to open with the path of the file or folder selected. Of course, this is only available on local folders.
Expanded compression capabilities
ForkLift is now able to create zip, pkzip, tar.gz, tar.bz2 and passworded zip archives.
Duplicate file
Many users will be relieved to learn that cmd-D will now create a duplicate of the selected file or folder in the current location. Works on both local and remote volumes.
Global preferences for conflict management
I don’t think this needs any detailed explanation. If this feature concerns you, I think you must be too happy at this moment to listen to me anyway.
Faster FXP
ForkLift is now able to initiate multi-threaded FXP transfers between FTP servers. Now how about that?
Copy URL everywhere
Copy URL got a warm welcome when we first published the feature. We’ve now improved it a notch to allow copying the path of any file, local or remote, getting a raw file URL even if the remote connection is not set up as meant.
Go To Folder item list
Those who prefer to use the Go To Folder panel to navigate around their systems will be happy to learn that the dialogue will now offer a dropdown item list once you start typing in the desired location’s path.
UI Changes
I really love the new Info Pane – the new typo makes it much more readable and usable. The Activity View also received small enhancements, including more info being displayed on current transfers, and keyboard control is now perfect.
I think it is clear we’re hugely enjoying this moment, and must also explain why we have indulged ourselves with a shiny new website for this occasion.
That said, I hope you will now find it in your heart to forgive my extended ramblings.
Enjoy your brand new ForkLift 1.7!
Wow, this update looks amazing, and I will download it asap when I get home from work. Thanks for the great work – I will be looking forward to future updates.
“It’s that creative spark that I’m so jealous of for our agency and that I’m so desperately fearful of losing. I don’t want academicians. I don’t want scientists. I don’t want people who do the right things. I WANT PEOPLE WHO DO INSPIRING THINGS…” (Bill Bernbach 1911 – 1982)
Guys, I think Bill just had love you for existing.
Thanks so much for all that onoffonoffoffonononoffoffonoffonon nights.
There’s not auto-update for 1.7?
Congratulations for another awesome release!
You guys rock!
Amazing update
Best filemanager on OS X hands down.
Thanks for this version. I only miss the short cut to bring the activity viewer to the front. But you did a great work with this latest release.
Yay! Congrats (:
But, guys, my default terminal isnt Terminal.app, its iTerm.app. Whats ya gonna do? (:
Yey! Give it up for us guys, we just love praise!!!
@senz
One of our users happened to post a tweak to have your terminal app of choice. Here’s a link to the forum thread:
http://forum.binarynights.com/showthread.php?t=284
wow, fantastic update fellas.
the website refresh is great and very pleasing on the eyes. i do have to say your older Features page was much more readable. absolutely minor nit, but i was always impressed by the design on that page. i think a few well placed larger images (a la Apple), not having the smaller images break the left-alignment of the text, as well as more whitespace between columns would really help.
i can’t believe i just typed all that, i’m such a webdesigner nerd. but you have a damn impressive feature list, i’d hate for new folks to not read it all.
also really happy to see the forums get a bit of design love.
anyway, 1.7 feels solid so far. congrats!
here’s a super rough mock of what i’m talking about with spacing:
http://i233.photobucket.com/albums/ee151/natebeaty/forklift-features-rough.jpg
of course then you’d have to make clever icons for everything, heh.
also your Connect image is a tiff, which only renders on Safari. on FF you just see the image alt “connect”.
i’ll shut up now. thanks for the great update! (off to put it to work…)
@nate
Wow, that looks mighty pretty to me. Thanks for the suggestion Nate – I always thought there was a slight probability that we might be better coders than designers…
My need is to quickly and easily keep mirrors of some local job folders on my iDisk, so that I can view various .pdf and other files from my iPhone using MobileFiles.app. So far, I’ve had to do this sync-work manually, and I’m sure you can imagine that I don’t do it regularly enough to ensure that I ALWAYS have access to EVERYTHING current.
I swear to God, I just last night spent 90 minutes browsing around for a decent file synchronizer. I found an Automator action that syncs two folders, but doesn’t delete orphans, a shareware app with an extraordinarily ugly interface, and another one that doesn’t work with iDisk.
Lo and behold, I start work this morning, launch ForkLift, and BuhZING! An update with FOLDER SYNC is available.
Have you guys been spying on me? O_o
(Is it possible to make this an automatic, recurring task, or should I just make that a wish-list submission?)
I purchased ForkLift on day one (May 31, ‘07) and have never regretted a penny spent. On the contrary, I feel like I very nearly ripped YOU off! I use ForkLift every day, moving files from home, to a work server, multiple FTP sites, and a few different iDisks, and damn if I know what I’d do without it. Thank you so much for 2 years of the best file manager on the planet and…
THANK YOU FOR FOLDER SYNC!
@Darryn
If we’re ever going to have a testimonial page, your comment will be posted on it.
Thanks for faring with us for the past two years!
Thanks for the update. It is most excellent. Your sync is the absolute best.
P.S. I’m the guy that had problems with ntfs dates. Those still don’t work but I’ve moved everything to the Mac side except my programming (I’m a windows programmer by day) so I’m no longer bothered by the ntfs dates.
Will there be the ‘temporary placeholder for files and folders if you want to use your Clipboard for other operations’ feature (called D S on competitor’s product)?
Also what do you think on the Column view mode?
@Chriswan
Congrats for the nicely oblique way to address the question of whether we’re going to do a feature that a competitive product has.
Well, I don’t think anybody could ’steal’ the idea – it’s been around in various forms since forever in computing. In any case, I won’t feel any remorse when we introduce stacks in the 2.0 release, which will btw contain new view modes, including column, and other exciting things.
csaba, how about plugins API? (;
@senz
well… to be honest, creating an architecture for plugins and all is not our priority at the moment. What plugins do you have in mind?