Firelinks is a remote server management system that uses Firefox's XUL
Like standard desktop applications, many aspects of Firelinks are customizable. For example, you can resize and rearrange individual columns in the file listing table by drag and drop. You can also show/hide a column by clicking on the column picker tool on the upper right hand corner of the table. Settings that you have changed for one session will be remembered by Firelinks.
Most operation in Firelinks can be carried out by using one of the following methods:
The folder panel shows the directories on your remote server. You can open up a folder by single clicking on it. Directory that have not been visited during this session will have a slightly lighter color. You can invoke the context menu by right clicking on a folder.
The folder panel can be hidden by clicking on the red close
button
on the upper right hand corner of the panel. To restore the panel, click on
the red restore
button that is beside the
throbber/progress indicator
(located above the upper right hand corner of the file listing table.)
Alternatively, you can toggle the panel on/off via the main menu bar or the
toolbar's context menu.
This backward and forward toolbar buttons can be used to navigate through the folders that you have visited during this session. The stop button can be used to stop remote operation that is taking a long time. The use of the reload, home, and folder up buttons should be obvious.
The filter on the top right hand corner can be used to filter the files that
are shown in the directory listing table. You can select one of
the predefined filters, or you can type your own filter such as
*.jpg;*.doc;
into the combo-box.
You can resize and rearrange individual columns in the table by drag and drop. You can also show/hide a column by clicking on the column picker tool on the upper right hand corner of the table. Each column can be sorted by simply clicking on the column name.
The difference between the Size
and Bytes
columns is
that Size
shows the file size in the nearest Kilobytes,
whereas Bytes
shows the file size in bytes.
Depending on the remote file system, some of the columns can in fact
be meaningless. The Owner
, Group
,
Permission
, and Mode
columns are useful only on a
Linux Server. The Access
and Created
columns are
meaningful only on file systems that supports them (for example, Windows NTFS).
Please note that the File Type
is determined purely on
the basis of file extension.
See the note below about how to make use of the MD5 column
The file listing table can be shown/hidden by clicking on the
throbber/progress indicator
located above the upper right hand
corner of the file listing table.
Alternatively, you can toggle the table on/off via the main menu bar or the
toolbar's context menu.
This is the main tab for Firelinks. It will show the properties associated with the files selected in the file listing table above. You can delete, restore from the trash bin, edit, download, chmod (for Linux/Unix) or view the files by using the tool and buttons on the upper right hand corner.
By selecting more than one file at a time (by holding down either the
control
or the shift
key while clicking
on the file with the mouse) you can carry out operation on multiple files
at once.
The tab panels can be hidden by clicking on the blue close
button
on the upper right hand corner of the panel. To restore the panel, click on
the blue restore
button that is beside the
throbber/progress indicator
(located above the upper right hand corner of the file listing table).
Alternatively, you can toggle the panel on/off via the main menu bar or the
toolbar's context menu.
This tab can be used to preview how a file will look like when it is access by a visitor via his/her browser. To preview a file simply select the file in the file listing table. If no file is selected then a HTML listing of the files will be shown. You can then preview a file by clicking on the file name in the HTML listing. To go back to the HTML listing, click on the directory part of the URL shown at the top of the panel. This is useful for navigating around the directory when the main file listing table is hidden.
This tab can be used to look at the source of the code that is used to
generate your web page. For example, if you want to look at the content of
.html
, .css
, .php
,
.jsp
or .asp
files then you select
the Text/Source tab and then click on the file. This tab can
also be used to preview graphic files (.jpg
,
.gif
, etc) that are not normally accessible via
the web because they are not under $DOCUMENT_ROOT
.
Just like the Web View tab, if no file is selected then a HTML listing of the files will be shown. You can then preview a file by clicking on the file name in the HTML listing. To go back to the HTML listing, click on the directory part of the URL shown at the top of the panel. This is useful for navigating around the directory when the main file listing table is hidden.
Use this tab to edit text files on your remote server. Please note that no file will be loaded into the editor if the current content of the editor has been modified but not saved.
You can tell the editor to save your changes automatically by checking
Auto Save
on. You can set how often the file should be auto
saved via
Use Discard
to tell the editor to abandon the modifications
you've made and go back to the last saved version.
If you are editing a file used to generate your web site (for example,
a .html
file), then you can use the Browser View
button on the top right hand
corner of the editor to preview your changes.
Use this tab to execute any command line based program on your remote server.
For example, you can use the dir
command to get a listing of the
currently selected directory. If you click on a file in the file listing
table then the file name will be inserted into your command line at the cursor
position.
You can save the command shell output by right clicking on the output
frame to bring up the context menu and then select
This Frame | Save Frame As...
Use the red Clear/Delete
button on the upper
right hand corner to clear your command shell history.
You can change the number of entries save in your command history combo-box via
Use this tab to upload files to your remote server. You can use the
MD5 check-box to ensure that the file has been uploaded
correctly.
Please note that under version 1.5 of Firefox for Windows you can not
upload files with names that contains Unicode characters. You will have to
rename the files, upload them, then rename the files back to their original
names on the server.
MD5, which stands for
You can use the MD5 value to check if a file has been uploaded or
downloaded correctly. Using MD5 is much more reliable than simply checking
the file date and size.
You can use the
For security reasons it is best to run the application via SSL.
If SSL is not enabled on your server then it is best to only change the
password when you are connected to your server inside a secured LAN.
Please note that your Firelinks password is never sent in the clear.
A challenge/reponse system is used so that only the password digest is sent.
File Upload Tab
Notes about MD5
Message Digest Five
,
is a way to compute the "signature" of a file.
Two files that have the same MD5 signature are almost
certainly the same.md5sum
(you can download a Windows version from
http://www.akeni.com/downloadprogram/tool/md5sum.exe)
from the command line to compute the MD5 of a file on
your local hardrive. Please note that under Windows you need to use
the -b
option.
Security Considerations