Ironic that just after I was singing the praises of the FTP client I use, I come across a new one that by all appearances, seems to outshine it. Ignorance really is bliss!

From the screencast I watched, just the performance of this app is worth a go. It’s the attention to the interface design, however, that really appeals to my sense of aesthetics and usability.

FTP has always been a bit too slow for my taste. That’s why I’ve tried to bypass using it whenever I can. I even set up my own staging server on my LAN with NFS mounts so all my file saves to my development environment stay Speedy McBytestream.

According to it’s developer, Flow is a new “connection client”, not just an FTP client. FTP is just one of the many protocols it supports (FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, WebDAV HTTPS, and .Mac). Brian Amerige, does, however, admit that Panic’s Transmit is Flow’s main competition. So ‘FTP client’ or ‘connection client’, it’s basically the same market space.

Flow also sports an integrated editor. I’m not sure about the wisdom in this strategy. That’s not to say it can’t pay-off, but it does make the goals a lot loftier. I always loved the integration of FTP into BBEdit. It made development an absolute breeze. But the FTP side of BBEdit was not particularly robust (not that it had to be, it just didn’t do FTP very well). Likewise, Transmit’s built-in basic text editor, is no BBEdit. Maybe this is too ‘in-the-box’ thinking, but it’s been my experience that it’s better to design a tool to do one job and do it better than anyone else does it. Hopefully, Brian can stay focused on what Flow needs to do and stays away from the bloat. Needless to say I’m a bit skeptical on this front.

If the progress in Flow is any indicator of the quality and attention to detail, I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy! Good luck, Brian!

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