I’ve always thought that Automator would be a great tool for streamlining web design workflow but it’s one of those things that requires study and it goes at the end of a long list of things I’d like to learn, ‘when I have the time.’ Fortunately Peter Dekkers took the time and came up with a truly useful tool, Upload to FTP: An action for OS X Automator.

Installing the action also installs a connection to the built in FTP server in OS X. That, in turn, makes it easy to attach FTP upload to a folder or as part of a workflow. Yes, the better FTP clients like Transmit and Yummy FTP allow you to create folder and dock drop boxes. But this is free. And it allows you to include file upload into any Applescriptable application, including the Finder.

Included with the Automator workflows are a couple of workflows that provide the action with immediate functionality. One is a simple upload of selected files and folders.

To take advantage of the workflow, I saved it as a Script Menu Plugin. Then I assigned a keyboard command for it in System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts.

Now all I have to do to upload files to my server is select the file, type Command + Option + Control + U and zap, the files are uploaded.

The capability to upload files in Windows Explorer has been available in Windows for years. It’s nice to finally see it for the Finder on the Mac.

The other included workflow will resize and upload images.

Think of selecting images in iPhoto, running the action and having your images, auto-sized, compressed and uploaded to a folder of your choice on your web server. Now that’s useful!.

I’m sure that as time goes on I’ll think of other ways to take advantage of this useful Automator action.

Possibly related:

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006 at 8:00 pm and is filed under Automation, FTP, Software Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.