net2ftp help

Note: the documentation below is outdated; there have been major changes between versions 0.82 and 0.90.

Participate in the development!

Never worked on an open source software project before? Read Havoc Pennington's article Working on Free Software to find out what it's like.

If you're interested in helping with the development of net2ftp, feel free!
Even if you can't code, there are plenty of other things to do, such as:

design the user interface
create new logos and icons
test new versions
translate messages
write reviews
write documentation (for end users and developers)
maintain the downloadable zip files

Post a message on the forum or send an email to david AT net2ftp DOT com.

Overview of the code

[ Introduction ]

The login information and state variables are passed from screen to screen via forms.

Sessions and cookies

For the moment net2ftp doesn't use sessions. This was to avoid session timeouts after 20 or 30 minutes; you can work without worrying about it for as long as you want.

Cookies are used to store the last FTP server, username and directory used.

Settings

net2ftp can be configured using the settings.inc.php, settings_authorizations.inc.php and settings_screens.inc.php files. One global variable $net2ftp_settings stores all the settings.

Icons

net2ftp uses 2 icon sets: Nuvola and Noia. Which icon set is used depends on the skin; all the code behind icons is in the /includes/skins.inc.php file. There are 4 kinds of icons within net2ftp:

Action icons: when you press on them, an action is triggered. There is an onMouseOver effect and onClick event. These icons are 32x32 pixels.
Mime icons: they indicate which kind of file is shown in the browse view. No onMouseOver effect. These icons are 16x16 pixels.
Title icons: they are placed next to the title on action screens.
Settings icons (not yet in use): they indicate if a setting is on or off -- for example if the FTP transfer mode is ASCII or BINARY. When the mode is ASCII, the ASCII icon is shown with a border, and there is no onMouseOver effect. The BINARY icon is shown without a border and there is an onMouseOver effect. The code for this FTP transfer mode is already written but not yet in use.

In (recent) Mozilla-based browsers, PNG images with a transparent background are shown fine. In Internet Explorer however they are not: the transparent regions are grey. Microsoft has issued a note on how to fix this: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q294714

The onMouseOver effect increases the icon size from 32x32 to 34x34 pixels. To avoid that the rest of the content would move, there is margin of 2px when the icon is 32x32, and a margin of 0px when it is 34x34.