[TxMt] files in project view

[Cliff Pruitt]

On Jul 5, 2007, at 4:42 AM, Graham Ashton wrote:

> I've never understood how people can put up with ftp-ing every little
> change. Is there a way to automate it so you don't have to press any
> buttons to make it happen?
>
> If it requires a manual "ftp-it-now" thought/action then it's a pain
> in the ass.

It's really not a pain at all, not any more than the tedious bother  
of having to keep doing that pesky "Save" thing.  It's all about  
motor memory.  I don't "think" about ftp, it's just part of my motor  
memory for save.  After your body is used to the action, there's  
really no difference between ⌘s and (⌘s)+(⌘⇧=).  Unless your  
internet connection really sucks, the file is uploaded by the time  
you can ⌘⇥ to your browser anyway so it's not much difference.   
I've never had a terribly fast experience mounting remote file  
systems over the net so I guess it all just depends on personal  
preference and environment.

Now, I will say it can be frustrating when you experience network  
problems but anything remote is going to behave that way. Plus,  
sometimes it's your only option.  Shared IIS hosts don't usually give  
you much in the way of remote file system access.

> You can't beat running your tests in a realistic environment before
> you check in; that means same the OS (and installed apps/libraries) as
> the servers that you deploy to.

If you're targeting one system & one server configuration I'd agree  
with you.  If you're targeting a product to run in any plain vanilla  
shared hosting environment then it's somewhat irrelevant cause you  
don't know what the OS or installed libraries are going to be  
anyway.  When possible I'd prefer to configure my personal local  
server as I desire to suit my product, and then when working to my  
satisfaction on the baseline configuration, I can push out to  
something else to test again. In reality, though, I'm much in the  
same boat as you, however, in that a lot of my clients require  
Microsoft IIS Servers, which is why I default back to FTP.

As for the FTP client recommendations, I use Transmit, which has a  
lot of features to make it pretty transparent from TextMate or  
anywhere else.