I used to use Interarchy, but gave up on it when they started adding all these weird features, then took them out again, then put them into an additional app, then (I think) put them back in just to totally change while charging high upgrade prices and generally not delivering the things I expect from an FTP app.

I'm using Fetch right now. It has a good synch feature and is free for students. Also, it works, which is pretty important and can't be said for many other FTP apps.

Say you have a download in progress and then you attempt another action on the server (such as downloading another file). In this case, a second connection must be made to the server, because the protocol doesn't allow for multiple simultaneous transactions on the same connection.

Downloading multiple files simultaneously in this manner will invoke the queue drawer. After you hit the maximum number of simultaneous connections (adjustable in prefs), they will begin queueing up, and execute in-order as free connections become available.

(If you want to transfer several files in a row without invoking the queue drawer, just do a multiple file selection by using the standard shift-click or cmd-click metaphors, and drag the files over. Transmit will transfer them one at a time over a single connection.)

The Batch Download window, on the other hand, is for preparing a series of files to be downloaded. You can drag files in, re-arrange the order if necessary, but no transfer will begin until you click "start".

At that time, the files will be downloaded, one at a time, in the given order. It gives you a little more control up-front, and the files don't all need to be on the same server.

The final difference is that the Batch Download window supports downloading only, whereas the Queue supports uploading as well.

Nothing about Panic's software sucks, of course, it's just programmed for a different audience ;-)

The above paragraph is brought to you by "Duh, Inc." :-)

On my machine, Transmit crashes every time I save in BBEdit after the SFTP connection has timed out. I sent Panic support a note about this and never heard back. So I'm back to Fetch and SSH tunnels, until Jim Matthews gets around to incorporating SFTP.

I've just been playing with it and find that the SFTP client is actually pretty good. It dosen't have all the bells and whistles you might want but it does have a simple ssh tunnel builder. That would allow Nat to use Transmit in normal FTP mode for it's feature set or, for example, FTPeel which doesn't do SFTP as far as I can tell.

It comes with good documentation built in and it's free. Can't complain about the price.