Using IE, Mozilla, Opera, or Navigator as an FTP client

In addition to viewing HTTP Web pages, you can also use your favourite browser as an FTP client. Just type the URL of an FTP site into the address bar (be sure to use ftp:// instead of http:// before the URL) and click Go or press Enter.

If you need to enter a name and password when using Internet Explorer, select "Login As" from the File menu and enter a user name and password. Once you're connected to the site, you can drag and drop files from your hard drive to the site to upload, or download files from the site to your hard drive by dragging in that direction.

Downloading files from FTP servers via Navigator is nothing new, but Communicator allows you to upload files as well. The syntax for FTP is ftp://user:password@server.site.com/directory/. If you leave out just the password but do put in the username (ftp://username@server.site.com), you'll be prompted for a password.

This lets you bookmark the site so that no one else will have access to it. If you leave out the username and password, you use the standard anonymous FTP login, so it's ftp://server.site.com/. While connected to an FTP URL, you can drag and drop files from your desktop to the Navigator window to upload them to the server (assuming you have the proper permissions).

However, for serious FTP work, we recommend you use a specialist FTP program, such as WS_FTP.

If you use Frontpage 2002 to prepare your website, you can use it to "publish" your website ("Web") as well. As there are some peculiarities to how it publishes the website, it is best not to mix uploading methods.