Flow: Review and Giveaway
Posted by Daniel Greg on 04/5/08 in Featured, Giveaways, Internet, Utilities, Web
Flow is an application that has been long awaited and much talked about. It was indeed billed as a possible Transmit killer by this very website. So now that it has been released, does it live up to the hype? Will it really be a Transmit killer or does the yellow and purple truck have some mileage in it yet, not to mention the many other Mac FTP applications?
I have spent a while with Flow before it was released and I have begun to build a pretty decent view on the application. It does some things differently from other FTP apps that I believe will ultimately make you decide whether you love it or loath it.
So what does Flow offer that is actually new to the FTP space? Surely it is completely saturated at the moment, right? Well it seems that these are questions the Flow designers have taken to heart when designing the app (and something that the developer spoke about recently in an interview). It is “a fresh approach to an old problem” and that is something that is very apparent as I was reviewing Flow. It felt more like the MarsEdits of this world rather than an FTP application. Its visual footprint is small and it integrates a lot of new Mac OS X features into the application.
We have this new, one-paned interface, which is unlike most FTP apps of today. In Flow there is no more dragging between “your stuff” and “their stuff”; you are now dragging between the Finder and Flow (or vice versa). For me this is brilliant, as it’s what I always did for some reason. Now it just means there is less mess on the screen - I just continue as I was. However, I can see that for some this could potentially be an issue. I don’t see it being a deal breaker, but if someone is very used to using dual-panes it can take quite a while to get out of the habit.
Another addition to Flow is its live editing capability. Here, as opposed to downloading a file, editing it and then re-uploading it to the server, Flow allows you to edit the file on the server itself. Obviously this has its appropriate times and places for use. It is perfect, for example, for tweaking a line of code or the layout on a temporary section of a site. It’s probably not best used live for mission-critical pages.
That being said, the editor is OK, but not particularly full featured. You have the essentials: basic syntax coloring and a live preview. There are no great features here, but one really thoughtful inclusion is the ability to switch the vertical orientation of the preview so you can either have it landscape (pictured) or portrait.
Flow also works hard to integrate new OS X features right into the client. Quicklook being a prime example. It works as you would probably expect it to. Along the bottom of the window there is a Quicklook icon. Click on it (or hit space-bar) and the highlighted item is opened with QuickLook. Of course the files have to be downloaded to be “Quicklooked”, so I wasn’t initially sure whether it would really be that useful. However, after a bit of use I found myself using it more often than I originally thought. Don’t expect to be opening big media files though, but text files (which ends up being most of the contents of the server if you are running a website) open fairly quickly. It also helps that there is an indication when a file has been downloaded and ready for Quicklook at the bottom of the screen; the Quicklook icon is not displayed until the file has been downloaded.
I should also point out that all the files are not automatically pulled down from the server, they are only downloaded if you highlight them in Flow, and even then they are only pulled to a temporary location. So you don’t need to worry about your entire website suddenly being downloaded to your HDD when starting Flow.
When Flow was introduced the developer produced some screencasts that clearly displayed Flow having quicker download and upload speeds compared to Transmit. I was fairly amazed at the time, mainly because I assumed that download/upload speeds were mostly dependent on your Internet connection.
Now I am even more amazed to see that it is actually true - there was no trickery involved. I didn’t do any serious benchmarking but I did time both Flow and Transmit downloading and uploading a 23MB file. Download-wise, Transmit clocked in at 9 minutes 16 seconds, whereas Flow completed the task in 7 minutes 11 seconds. 2 minutes 5 seconds in that context is a phenomenal difference. In uploading the same file Flow clocked 9 minutes 17 second and Transmit was done in 9 minutes 46. Admittedly, the upload difference wasn’t as great, but with the only difference being the software, it’s pretty impressive.
So some could argue that you might as well buy Flow purely for the better transfer speeds, although I would like to point out that there are plenty of other FTP clients out there, and if you wanted to purchase Flow purely on that basis you would want to see a benchmark of all of these apps to see which was really the fastest. However, for my money there is a lot more to Flow that would warrant a purchase other than speed.
The interface is one of those key factors when deciding whether Flow is for you. They claim that Flow presents “a gorgeous, yet tasteful user interface” and I am inclined to agree with them. As I mentioned earlier, this feels much more like a modern day “Mac app” rather than an ancient FTP client - something that I, personally, love about this application.
It has a clear layout and one that any Mac user would be instantly at home with; it has the familiar sidebar and toolbar layout that is becoming a great standard for new applications.
Sitting on the toolbar is a lot of functionality, however I am not sure how I feel about the toolbar icons. For a start, it uses a Safari icon for “View the selected item in your default browser”. Am I the only person who thinks that using a Safari icon for “your default browser” is just wrong? I am a Camino/Webkit Nightly user and I did start wondering whether that was an “open in Safari” button. Surely the icon of your current browser (something that Adium does really well) would be much better suited to the functionality of the button.
My eyes were then drawn to the rest of the icons and they seemed fine other than “Move” and “New Folder” (pictured).
Although perfectly clear, there seems to be something not very Mac-like about them. I am no icon critic so it was interesting that I would suddenly think that - in fact, I have never had that impression before. It would be interesting to see how other people react to them. In any case, it had no real impact on the usability of the application.
A handy addition (although not exactly new) to the interface is the addition of tabs. These work pretty much as expected, but I wish they worked with the sidebar as links do in most web browsers. I found myself cmd+clicking in the expectation that the connection would be made in a new tab. However, that is not the case. Not a game-breaker, but it would have been a nice inclusion.
When browsing your server you have a small preview section down at the bottom of your window. A simple and useful addition to the interface, it just reduced the amount of “mouse miles” I had to travel to find out the information I needed - there was a lot available to me at a glance.
The section that most people will be spending some time in is the “Transfers” section of the application. Something, again, where the interface and engine in Flow really excel.
The interface is simple and clear. It only takes a glance for you to know the status of all your transfers. It presents the information cleanly and keeps it simple, displaying your transfer data in the same window, unlike some applications. In my opinion it is a very tidy way of dealing with it.
In case you couldn’t tell I really like Flow and it has won a well-deserved place on my dock. It has delivered on its promise and, as a 1.0, it is an amazing platform for the application to grow and mature into a Mac gem. Whether it’s right for you, however, depends a lot on personal preference (doesn’t every app?). It certainly brings something new to a well worn application market. Is it a Transmit killer? Time will tell, but this certainly has a better chance than anything I have seen up until now.
Flow is $29 and can be found at the Extendmac website.
Extendmac have graciously provided us with 5 Flow licenses to give away to lucky MacApper readers. To be in with a chance of winning simply add a comment below with the feature that you would most like to see in Flow. The winners will be announced in a followup post next week.
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