cognecy
Well guys, I am not sure where to begin with the issues with V6 other than to start this with a simple statement ... You should never try to fix something that was not broken! The V5 layout was a very good evolution from the starting point of this client but now it seems you have gone all Win8 on us and changed everything... not good, not good at all.
The ribbon interface is utterly ridiculous and there was no need whatsoever to introduce this feature degradation. It does not work on MS Office and it certainly does not work in an FTP Client. SMFTP is not Microsoft or Apple and Ribbons do not improve productivity, they hinder it. I have used SmartFTP since it was first released and have always been a fan until now. I have really tried hard to like V6 and the more I use it the more I hate it as it just frustrates me. The interface is no longer intuitive and adds way too much time to what should be very simple tasks.
My feature improvement suggestions really revolve around brining back the Classic Layout or at a minimum, giving us the option of layouts for those of us that work from a regular computer and find no use for a ribbon. This way, we still get the security improvements of V6 but we still have the option to stick with a layout that made us Smart FTP customers in the first place. As it is, I am now shopping for a new client after many years as a SMFTP fan-boy.
Local/Remote Browser Windows
- bring back the icons selections that used to be under the Navigation panel (no way to manually flip between Passive/Active anymore or have the quick tools right there. Not sure why those went away but that was fundamental functionality of an FTP Client). Other simple things like the new folder and delete buttons in each browser (local and remote) are no longer there... used to be part of that tool bar selection for each browser.
- Browsers will no longer remember view settings. Feature suggestion is to fix this! For instance, I prefer to always have my local/remote windows in detail view. No matter what I do, it flips me back to list view with every folder click or every time I re-open the client. This is inefficient as it requires more key clicks to get simple jobs done.
The ribbon interface is utterly ridiculous and there was no need whatsoever to introduce this feature degradation. It does not work on MS Office and it certainly does not work in an FTP Client. SMFTP is not Microsoft or Apple and Ribbons do not improve productivity, they hinder it. I have used SmartFTP since it was first released and have always been a fan until now. I have really tried hard to like V6 and the more I use it the more I hate it as it just frustrates me. The interface is no longer intuitive and adds way too much time to what should be very simple tasks.
My feature improvement suggestions really revolve around brining back the Classic Layout or at a minimum, giving us the option of layouts for those of us that work from a regular computer and find no use for a ribbon. This way, we still get the security improvements of V6 but we still have the option to stick with a layout that made us Smart FTP customers in the first place. As it is, I am now shopping for a new client after many years as a SMFTP fan-boy.
Local/Remote Browser Windows
- bring back the icons selections that used to be under the Navigation panel (no way to manually flip between Passive/Active anymore or have the quick tools right there. Not sure why those went away but that was fundamental functionality of an FTP Client). Other simple things like the new folder and delete buttons in each browser (local and remote) are no longer there... used to be part of that tool bar selection for each browser.
- Browsers will no longer remember view settings. Feature suggestion is to fix this! For instance, I prefer to always have my local/remote windows in detail view. No matter what I do, it flips me back to list view with every folder click or every time I re-open the client. This is inefficient as it requires more key clicks to get simple jobs done.