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Using WS_FTP

As we said before, WS_FTP is one of the most popular and easiest ways to move files from a remote computer to your PC. In this exercise you will use this FTP client to download a copy of a text file from Project Gutenberg. This is the Internet's oldest producer of free electronic texts (etexts) and is one of the public FTP sites listed in the directory of the WS_FTP Limited Edition. 
 

Starting WS_FTP

After you have installed the software either in your C:\Program Files or C:\My Download, start or launch the WS_FTP software by double-clicking its icon

You will then see this dialog box called Session Properties:
 


Notice the different fields in this dialog box. "Ipswitch", the name you see on the Profile Name, is the manufacturer of WS_FTP. Click on the inverted triangle to its right to open the drop-down menu and see the other FTP sites in this directory. Notice the other government and educational sites you can access, IRS Tax Forms, MIT, NASA, and Smithsonian Images. The others are good sites for obtaining computer resources such as software, games, utilities: McAFee for anti-virus products, Netscape and Microsoft for their latest browser, plug-ins, and other products. For now let's just visit the Project Gutenberg site. 

Notice that you have two panels in front of you. The one on the left represents your computer, and the one on the right is that of the FTP site. Simple but easy to understand, right? The left and right arrows are the commands that allow you to download (left) or upload (right) files between the two computers. In the example shown the directory displayed by the left panel has the path C:\Student Files\ACGo\TOE648\New Folder. This is the where I want want the downloaded files to go. Observe the same command buttons on both panels, the ones you will likely use often are: 

  • ChgDir - to change the directory, for example, if you want to download a file to a floppy disk on the A drive of your computer.
  • MkDir - to create a new directory or folder
  • Rename - to rename a file or directory (I may have to rename the "New Folder" to "ProjctGutenberg" while I'm in this panel).
  • Delete - to delete a file or directory
  • Refresh - to reload or refresh a directory
You can select more than one file at a time by pressing the Shift or Ctrl keys while you are clicking your choices. The Shift key allows you to select items in consecutive order, i.e. etext00 to etext96. The Ctrl key lets you skip and select, i.e. etext00, etext93, etext95. Although you can FTP the entire folder, for this exercise let's just select one file from the folder etext00 by double-clicking it. Select the file named 00ws110.txt. This is the third edition of Project Gutenberg's Etext of William Shakespeare's First Folio/35 Plays. 
Before you click the on the  button make sure the file will go to the drive, directory or folder where you want it to go. Now click the arrow button. This will activate the transfer status box which will disappear once the transfer is complete.This will be confirmed by a "Transfer complete" statement at the bottom of the panel. 

Now open the file you have just downloaded using your word processor -- because it's a text file you can use either Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, WordPad, or Notepad. Congratulations! 

The Official Project Gutenberg Web pages may be found at http://promo.net/pg. You might prefer to browse their site to do a search for specific works by author or title. The relevant links section will cite other FTP sites and their corresponding Web sites for information such as descriptions of the contents of the directories, and the FTP hostname/address to access their archives. 


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