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Google Plans to Deprecate FTP URL Support in Chrome
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- edaemon 7y agoReferenced post: https://chromestatus.com/feature/6246151319715840 https://chromestatus.com/feature/6246151319715840
- subsubsub 7y agoGoogle don't want users, they want pliant consumers. The idea that young people know more about tech than their parents will become less and less true in the future.
- georgebarnett 7y agoWhy do we need a separate legacy protocol for file transfers? What’s the benefit in keeping protocols for the sake of it?
- im3w1l 7y agoWe need a protocol for file transfers because having a protocol makes it more standardized and interoperable than if everyone rolls their own solution. Do we need browser support for it? It still happens now and then that a link will have an ftp target. That could be handled in the browser or it could open a separate url-handling application, as e.g. email or magnet urls do.
- anyfoo 7y agoYes, but as someone who's been around when FTP was a big thing, and HTTP only just came into fruition... what, really, is the benefit of FTP? In fact, FTP is actually a horrible protocol, that caused me much pain even back then: It uses separate "command" and "data" channels. The data channel is usually in the other direction, i.e. the client listens to a connection from the server when downloading a file. Passive mode, and an extra command for that, had to be implemented, and if the stars don't align right, it still ends up being a pain. FTP also used to default to 7bit. If you did not explicitly switch to 8bit mode, you got corrupted downloads. This maybe made sense in a world with fundamentally different encodings, line endings, and where connection speeds were slow enough that downloading text files was a big task, but now? Then, if I remember correctly, the file listing you got was not actually standardized, it could just be the output of the "ls" command on the server! FTP clients used to be dumb and just passed that output through to you, so it did not matter much. For smarter clients later, it did start to matter. Finally, what does FTP actually offer that, in most cases, HTTP, and, in niche cases, rsync, scp or sftp do not offer?
- viraptor 7y ago> It uses separate "command" and "data" channels This is not a bad thing in itself. It could enable you to download each file from a different, potentially better endpoint, while talking to the same server for coordination. It's just not the way we do it these days anymore - 3xx and anycast/CDNs solve that one to some extent. And NATs destroyed that idea being usable years ago. It's still fine in protocols like sip.
- anyfoo 7y agoYes. Just like the text conversion thing, or the non-standardizes file listing thing (not everything was UNIX-ish, VMS was still around), at the time it made sense. Today it's just clunky hindrances, and the protocol has lost its benefits.
- ZWoz 7y agoI would argue, that separate control/data channels makes protocol more secure. You can't sneak commands on data and you don't need worry, how do terminate data transmission and switch back to control mode.
- big_chungus 7y agoFTP is basically useful as a single-use protocol: file transfer only. File transfer only allows a more stripped-down, dedicated server with better security. Vsftpd and others have excellent security specifically tailored to permission-based file transfers with access control lists etc. You will rarely find a comparable http option. It's not perfect, but there are also good partes and reasons why it's still around. Secure FTP is still a good option for some cases.
- anyfoo 7y agoAs written in another comment, you will find FTP to actually be a truly horrendous protocol, at least from today's perspective. I'm not sure there is anything that FTP offers, that the rsync or sftp, for example, offer much better (or simply HTTP if it's only in one direction), and then some. SFTP is actually not just FTP over SSH. The protocol is different precisely to get rid of a lot of the outdated nuisances.
- takeda 7y agoFTP became a nightmare to use thanks to introduction of NAT, it was developed before NAT existed so it wasn't designed with it in mind. As for rsync, sftp, scp those are heavily tied to ssh, rsync to the point that you actually ssh to host and call rsync command. rsync has a server mode as well, but almost no one uses it.
- big_chungus 7y agoYes, there are lots of issues with FTP. I've worked with it, and it is in many ways a nightmare. That aside, you can use FTP for auth and ACL in of which HTTP and rsync just aren't capable. I'm not sure this is a flaw in the core protocol so much as the tooling, but there you have it. FTP config syntax may often be byzantine. But it's widely supported (especially on old, low-spec, or embedded devices). For newer stuff, yeah sftp is probably better. But it's still got its uses.
- georgebarnett 7y agoCompletely agree it still has its uses. So does Cobol and any number of older legacy tooling. That’s not the point we are discussing though; This is specifically regarding Chromium supporting FTP.
- lazylizard 7y agoFtp is fast
- georgebarnett 7y agoGenuinely curious. Why do you think a bitstream from an FTP server is faster than from a HTTP server?
- ZWoz 7y agoWhole solution and experience is different, even if some point uploading file by bytes over TCP is similar. HTTP server itself isn't solution. You need code implementing upload functionality, probably support for uploading many files at once and tracking progress. Now you client uses javascript and that client is remote, you need to "download" it from HTTP server. FTP client is small, local and don't have much overhead, HTTP with its stateless form needs headers retransmitted with every request.
- georgebarnett 7y agoThat’s all well and good, and has nothing to do with Chromium keeping ftp support.
- ZWoz 7y agoIndeed, but your question wasn't about Chromium ftp support. Note, I am not lazylizard, so I don't really know, what he meant by "Ftp is fast", but I have my own thoughs and general dislike to webify everything on internet.
- layoutIfNeeded 7y agoHow would you download a folder of files via HTTP? I don’t want to wait 10 minutes for the server to zip them, thank you.
- kadoban 7y agoBoth of those may be true, but does it have anything to do with ftp going away? It's a pretty bad protocol that's rarely used, why should browsers still support it?
- systematical 7y agoUse a proper client like Filezilla for this and go over SFTP, no reason for FTP these days and even less so in a browser.
- takeda 7y agoThere is[1], but yeah it doesn't apply in this context. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_eXchange_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_eXchange_Protocol
- kart23 7y agoI saw a 6th grader using filezilla to update his website the other day. 99% of people didnt know what ftp was 10 years ago, that hasn't changed. Every generation loves to trash the one below it, that certainly will never change.
- mlyle 7y agoI think it's a lot harder to become technically competent these days. Before, computers compelled you to have a certain level of technical competence to be a user. Now, the barrier to entry is a lot lower, but there aren't many of the very young learning their way around command lines, etc. The resources once you are on the track to doing technical stuff are far better, but you're less likely to end up on that track-- especially at an early age.
- sophiebits 7y agoYou used to need a certain amount of technical competence to be literate. Now we teach everyone to read and write! What is the world coming to?
- mlyle 7y agoThat's hardly what I said. It's good that computers are more accessible. But by making it easy, we're providing less opportunity for people who are curious about innards at an early age. Of course, now we're teaching computational thinking in schools, but IMO it's a really big open question whether our attempts to teach that work, especially in elementary school.
- userbinator 7y agoIt's more like "now we don't have to teach everyone to read and write, we do the (filtered/censored/etc.) communication for them."
- cameronbrown 7y ago> Now, the barrier to entry is a lot lower, but there aren't many of the very young learning their way around command lines, etc. I'm a fairly young person. What I've seen over the past few years is technology is finally useful and accessible to everyone. Forcing people to use the command line isn't a useful skill for 99.5% of people anymore, it's just senseless gatekeeping to make it a computer requirement. I got into computers by ripping into Windows XP internals and learning how it worked when I was a kid, no command line needed. There will always be people who are more curious about how things work. Have faith that kids are smart enough to use the internet to learn for themselves. Just because technology is easier does not mean it's harder to learn how to be "technically competent". Remember that the definition of technically competent moves with the times, too.
- ahupp 7y agoWhy do you assume this is driven by some desire for "pliant consumers", vs a desire to build a simpler and more secure browser?
- TylerE 7y agoNot bothered by this. No one should be running FTP in 2019. It sends passwords in plain text for christ's sake.
- kccqzy 7y agoNo one really uses FTP to transmit anything secret or confidential. Most of the time the password to that FTP server is just "guest" and the same file can also be retrieved by HTTP without authentication.
- notabee 7y agoYou would think that no one would, in 2019. I hope that you never have to witness otherwise.
- andrewstuart2 7y agoI work at a bank (opinions my own) and nearly everything we do (including modernization, but especially partnership communications) is FTP-based. It's just about the only real standard available when the code is older than most of the devs. We do use modern encryption and mutual TLS to authenticate and encrypt everything, including before password transmission when that's even an option, but FTP is still the backbone of a ton of big older businesses.
- darrenf 7y agoI too work at a company/in an industry where FTP (incl. sftp/ftps) is still crucial, for both inbound and outbound transfers. A great many of our partners would find using other protocols more cumbersome. Automating the download/upload of entire directories of arbitrarily named files seems considerably easier/to require less code than any solution over HTTP might (log in, perhaps change directory, `prompt`, then `mget/mput *`). Albeit I've not done much research into alternative means recently, but a dedicated protocol beats a hand rolled solution and anyway inertia is strong - especially as (for us) nothing is transferred in either direction that isn't destined to be made public by one party. This is tangential to whether support for FTP is still worth keeping in a web browser, mind.
- morpheuskafka 7y agoI'm personally fine with this. FTP is a different protocol, just like BitTorrent. It's not part of the modern web, so it's just another loose end to tie up. Even though it will be around for a while, it's not relevant to Chrome's user audience/usecase.
- m463 7y agoAnd it's not a great protocol.
- Someone1234 7y agoIt is definitely a product of its time. Even FTPS isn't very good. SFTP is though (poorly named, it is based on SSH rather than the FTP protocol), but no web browser that I know of supports SFTP.
- anyfoo 7y agoYeah. Even though I remember a lot of the reasons for FTPs weirdness back then, looking at it below the cover today, it's a similar feeling as operating a mechanic calculating machine. Interesting, weird, with unfamiliar concepts, but you wouldn't do it like that anymore.
- m463 7y agoYeah, I think multiplexing commands and data was probably not as well solved a problem as it is now. Having worked with ssh/scp/sftp, I think sftp could be better too, and therefore more useful. It's intimately entwined with ssh, which means that instead of just transferring files, you have to give out ssh permissions where they're not required. Really, there should be an sftp client and server, strictly dealing with files. - You could have "accounts" that weren't real users on the machine - You wouldn't have to deal with users and shells and groups and permissions - You wouldn't have users running commands on your machine - You could have read-only sftp (sort of a repository with access controls) - You could have write-only sftp (sort of a dropbox) - You could make these formal, with daemons like read-only-sftpd or write-only-sftpd that were securely purposed to prevent unexpected file operations.
- quotemstr 7y agoIsn't it clear to everyone now that HTTP is the new IP and TCP? That all future protocols will subsist on a web tech substrate? Is that such a bad thing? The vocabulary of URLs and cookies is much richer and less centralized than the vocabulary of port numbers and connection tuples. Why should we keep FTP or other legacy non-HTTP protocols around? What are we buying? Slightly lower connection setup byte counts?
- DaiPlusPlus 7y agoHTTP is objectively better then FTP for downloading files. For remote file management and uploading there are other options besides WebDAV (itself a HTTP protocol extension), such as SSH/SFTP. Basically the only case I can think of that needs FTP are people wanting to access a shared-webhost web-space. And FTP works fine for them already, and they aren’t using Chrome to update their site either - so no loss.
- Proven 7y agoIt doesn’t matter what is “better” for “people”. If I want to use FTP I will use FTP. Google should be able to do what they want with their browser, and I may choose to use another browser (already done).
- aloknnikhil 7y agoThat's a naive statement. Take streaming protocols, as an example, and that alone is reason enough for why you shouldn't it over HTTP. HTTP is inherently stateless. There are many use-cases that are stateful. This leads to high latencies for HTTP streaming since the full state (HTTP headers to tell me who you are and what you want) is sent for every request.
- quotemstr 7y agoHTTP these days (via WebSockets) allows for the creation of stateful connections. My idea is that HTTP will just expand to encompass any remaining non-HTTP use cases. HTTP isn't even coupled to TCO anymore!
- Causality1 7y agoAfter this change, will Chrome still be able to support FTP through extensions?
- takeda 7y agoGiven that extensions are just JavaScript code and they constantly restrict what they can do, I doubt it.
- tln 7y agoExtensions can communicate with a native helper app actually. This looks like an FTP capable extension. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sftp-client/jajcoljhdglkjpfefjkgiohbhnkkmipm?hl=en-GB https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/sftp-client/jajcol... Not sure if it uses a proprietary proxy though.
- pg_is_a_butt 7y agochrome is a joke
- rahuldottech 7y agoI know for a fact that HP distributes software and drivers over FTP files that they link to on their website. FTP isn't used much anymore, but IMO/IME, it's still nice to have for those rare times when you come across a file that you need to download and it's served over FTP.
- toby- 7y agoAgreed completely, but Google don't care about "nice to have"; if it doesn't ultimately make them money, they couldn't care in the slightest, yet people here will often applaud this attitude as if it were progress.
- Someone1234 7y agoIt is progress though. FTP is insecure, and worse still it breaks the security model of HTTPS (see article for more info). Plus additional code paths could be sources of bugs/exploits, particularly old/rarely updated ones.
- jimmaswell 7y agoYou can justify removing anything with "less code paths." I hate that argument. Don't care about FTP being insecure either. Google's just being hostile to the open web as usual and getting the usual applause.
- bvttf 7y agoWouldn't this just make a ftp:// url fallthrough to the ftp client in Dolphin/Finder/Explorer/xdg? Like, worst-case ChromeOS loses ftp?
- untog 7y agoSensible move. I'm sure they have data showing it's used by an absolutely tiny number of users, and getting rid of it removes a source of potential security issues down the line.
- Narishma 7y agoThat's how I switched to Firefox years ago. Chrome's data had showed them a particular feature I liked wasn't used by a ton of people so they removed it.
- Pxtl 7y agoCorrect me if I'm wrong, but Windows and most Linux distros both come with usable ftp clients in general. So an ftp link will result in the OS handling it, right? And so it opens in IE or Filezilla or whatever. That's fine... Except on a Chromebook or Android, where it will be a pain.
- foobarbecue 7y agoWindows comes with an ftp client? Not that I know of. Unless you mean MS Edge? Oh or I guess there's a command line one. It's not integrated into Windows Explorer, though.
- pedrocx486 7y agoWindows Explorer can navigate (and transfer files) on FTPs. Type "ftp://ip.addr.of.ftp" in explorer and you're in. :-)
- takeda 7y agoThat's because it shares code base with IE, a web browser. Here we are talking about removing FTP from a browser.
- izacus 7y agoNo, actually the Explorer FTP support doesn't come from a browser at all. It's actually the other way around - IE handed off FTP handling to Explorer.
- jpindar 7y agoHuh, so it can. I never knew that.
- foobarbecue 7y agoWoah... I stand corrected. I guess I had only tried sftp!
- pedrocx486 7y ago
- Endy 7y agoSecond best reason to move away from Chrome.
- The_rationalist 7y agoRidiculous, Firefox removed support for FTP far before chrome.
- kbrosnan 7y agoFirefox has not removed support for ftp. I just browsed to ftp://ftp.osuosl.org/ in Firefox 68 just before submitting this comment. Mozilla stopped running ftp://ftp.mozilla.org quite a while ago. Maybe that is what you were remembering?
- The_rationalist 7y agoWhat I said was erroneous! This is what I remembered badly, https://www.fxsitecompat.dev/en-CA/docs/2018/loading-ftp-resources-within-web-page-is-no-longer-allowed/ https://www.fxsitecompat.dev/en-CA/docs/2018/loading-ftp-res...
- userbinator 7y agoConsidering that Google (search) still lists plenty of FTP results, many of which have been extremely useful to me, this seems like another move to bully the Internet into what Google wants it to be. Will it start removing those results, effectively censoring another huge chunk of the Internet? It's already hard enough to find older/more obscure information, and FTP sites are more likely to be in that category. Also, I can't be the only one who's absolutely sick of hearing that bloody "security" argument again. Yes, everyone knows FTP is plaintext, and so is HTTP. But drivers, which I'd say are a significant part of FTP use, are almost always themselves signed anyway, and I don't think malware is widely distributed via FTP either (I'm curious why FTPS/SFTP doesn't see to be indexed, or why they didn't decide to add that to the browser instead --- or at least I've never come across a search result that links to one.)
- CGamesPlay 7y agoFTP support is still a big attack surface for the client that has to be managed, regardless of wire security. But my gut reaction to reading this concern is actually: why do you think this is “bullying” and not “opening the door for a niche competitor”?
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y agoWhat big attack surface? The client? FTP is an ugly/stupid protocol, but it's not really complex (I suspect it's far simpler than HTTP).
- userbinator 7y agoI'm surprised the article claims there are still bugs, because one would think (hope) that a protocol over 30 years old with an implementation over a decade old should've received its last bugfix long ago and become truly stable by now.
- a_t48 7y agoCan you give an example of a piece of software of reasonable complexity (network/file handling, etc) that has solidified like this?
- rkagerer 7y agoI've always felt browsers are gimped FTP clients and found it weird they had support for the protocol in the first place. In fact the first time I used an FTP url in Netscape I was surprised it actually worked. That said, I find the viewpoint "users should not be impacted by this deprecation" the height of arrogance. Note that phrase is lifted from the article, and is not present in the dev team's post.
- kerng 7y agoUsing Chrome these days is like Internet Explorer in 1999. You are at the mercy of a giant corporation.
- userbinator 7y agoThe difference is that IE in 1999 was made by a giant corporation that profited from selling software, and not from monetising/tracking/advertising.
- iovrthoughtthis 7y agoGood. An easy feature for competitor browsers to implement.
- The_rationalist 7y agoFirefox used to support FTP too and removed support for it far before chrome.
- brokensegue 7y agoNo?
- The_rationalist 7y agoI was wrong. https://www.fxsitecompat.dev/en-CA/docs/2018/loading-ftp-resources-within-web-page-is-no-longer-allowed/ https://www.fxsitecompat.dev/en-CA/docs/2018/loading-ftp-res...
- tln 7y agoSource? I just opened ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ in firefox 68.
- The_rationalist 7y agoI was mostly wrong. https://www.fxsitecompat.dev/en-CA/docs/2018/loading-ftp-resources-within-web-page-is-no-longer-allowed/ https://www.fxsitecompat.dev/en-CA/docs/2018/loading-ftp-res...
- MiscIdeaMaker99 7y agoMy take is that they didn't want to invest resources into making the FTP client secure in Chrome because it's usage is low, so they just decided that it'd be better to just remove it entirely. Whatever. Anyway, it's not like Chrome couldn't send the URL to a dedicated FTP client. Hell, it could even be another browser like Firefox. It's not going to be the end of the world -- just not as seamless of an experience and one would like.
- The_rationalist 7y agoJust as a reminder, Firefox did this (a year ago?).
- Narishma 7y agoIs that true? I just opened an FTP URL in Firefox 68 just fine.
- The_rationalist 7y agoNo what I said was in fact erroneous! https://www.fxsitecompat.dev/en-CA/docs/2018/loading-ftp-resources-within-web-page-is-no-longer-allowed/ https://www.fxsitecompat.dev/en-CA/docs/2018/loading-ftp-res... But FTP still is.
- hnsocks 7y agoCan Google deprecate them self out of political and sexual scene also .. please no more parties with Epstein..
- alexandercrohde 7y agoNot for this reason alone (mostly because I can never sign out of the browser and it's trying to auto-sign-me-in to sites I don't want tracking me) I uninstalled chrome yesterday. End of an era. I imagine it would take the better part of a decade to earn my loyalty back if they ever pulled a 180, but seeing their direction the writing has been on the wall for a while.
- Smithalicious 7y agoWhat can I say except "fuck Google"? I don't think there's anything constructive to be said here because this is so obviously a bad move (for users). I feel like Google is quickly moving in the footsteps of IE; embrace, extend, extinguish and all that. I don't like how Google now has so much market share in the browser space that they can essentially unilaterally make decisions that are user-unfriendly and have a real impact. I switched (back) to Firefox for this reason. I switched away from them when they essentially purged Brendan Eich for political reasons, but they're the lesser of two evils now. I guess in summary, all browsers suck and we're all fucked.
- sschueller 7y agoWhat alternatives to Chrome are people here using other than Firefox or safari?
- Jaruzel 7y agoThere are 100,000s of resources on publicly accessible FTP servers and the removal of direct access to these files via one of the worlds most used browsers is major blow for information storage and retrieval on the internet. It is obvious that the next FTP related headline we see from Google is when (not, if) they drop FTP links from all Google search results. There's no point them listing FTP urls in the results if their own browser can't connect to them. (I don't understand why they can't just keep FTP support in, but with a security dialog that warns users the connection and data will be non-encrypted) So much is going to be lost when this happens, it's really sad. All because Google want to recreate the internet as the Googlenet, with HTTPS URLs only, most of which link to their own walled garden servers (AMP etc.) The internet started off as a wonderful limitless information sharing platform, now it's just a shopping mall controlled by corporates. The worse thing is... the general public just don't care.
- waspleg 7y agoTrue. They're very much the new Microsoft and Chrome is the new IE. But the general public also doesn't know what it used to be like. I logged in just to up vote you. I wish we had functioning anti-trust laws.
- adaptbrian 7y agothe US govt has google on points one and two currently. this has been building since the last round of FTC comments: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GK8YUqQUHYqfmulKuDUwhYG2_GSQa2lM/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GK8YUqQUHYqfmulKuDUwhYG2_GS... although many including google are evading. they dont care for some reason: https://cicilline.house.gov/press-release/cicilline-criticizes-tech-firms-evasive-testimony-requests-answers-questions https://cicilline.house.gov/press-release/cicilline-criticiz...
- tln 7y ago> There are 100,000s of resources [...] major blow for information storage Thats a very small fraction of all the resources. > It is obvious that the next FTP related headline we see from Google is when (not, if) they drop FTP links from all Google search results. There's no point them listing FTP urls in the results if their own browser can't connect to them. This is a worthy concern, for sure. Although how do you know they haven't already done this? Do you have a search that shows ftp: urls? > The internet started off as a wonderful limitless information sharing platform, now it's just a shopping mall controlled by corporates. I'm trying to think of the period when the internet wasn't driven by corporate interests. Before the dot com boom, I suppose? When newsgroups thrived, and email servers roamed free without spam? That was fun but theres a fuckton more information on the internet now.
- IloveHN84 7y agoWhy don't they remove the bloat in source code, reducing its compile time from 2/3 hours to roughly minutes?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Forge36 7y agoWill FTP links prompt to open another program? I'm for the change if Google provides an extension/recommends a viewer. If suddenly the links stop working and there isn't a way view the contents, it will be a frustrating transition
- OnlyRepliesToBS 7y agobrowser industrial wide collusion anti-trust urgently required
- nyxxie 7y agoA lot of Google hate in this thread. Normally I'm on board, but I think you guys are making a big deal out of nothing. When I click magnet:// links, my bittorrent client opens. When I click slack:// links, my slack client opens. With this change, when I click ftp:// my ftp client will open. Chrome has simply decided it only wants to spend resources focusing on http:// http:// and make the unrelated protocols separate. I see 0 problem with this, it's not like they're killing the only or even the most popular ftp client out there. We should all be using sftp anyways...
- arvidkahl 7y agoI always liked FTP support as a part of the browser platform. Of course, it would not have the capabilities of a standalone FTP client. And for those who needed those capabilities, lots of tools exist. The web is not just HTTP. FTP has been the binary companion to the text-based HTTP protocol, and I think that for the sake of the browser being a platform and not just a viewing tool, it should stay.
- HelloNurse 7y agoFTP as a protocol doesn't have interesting metadata to collect (which would be technically challenging in the first place, without redirection and JavaScript tricks) and doesn't allow advertisement, while FTP as content is hard to index and promote in ways that generate "value".
- pts_ 7y agoTakes me back to the shitty ISP I had which decided to block port 21 to reduce traffic and increase security.
- zzo38computer 7y agoFTP isn't such a good protocol anyways (and there are better programs for accessing FTP than most web browsers); there is Gopher, HTTP(S), Plan9, TFTP, SSH, and other protocols. (I also invented a httpdirlist format (I have been told that httpdirlist is like WebDAV but not as bad; but I don't know WebDAV so I cannot say if it is or not). But, sometimes, the other protocols is better than HTTP(S) anyways.) I think it is fine to have them implemented in separate programs, although sometimes you might want to display the result in the browser; one possibility is that the user can configure a program to execute and can configure it to treat the data that program writes to stdout as a HTTP response (possibly with different permissions than normal; it might allow some things that are normally disallowed, and some things that are normally allowed might not work). You might then also want to support other MIME types. You can do this also with external programs; so one configuration option could be to allow treating the program as a filter to convert it into a format the browser understands (e.g. plain text, HTML, PNG, etc; perhaps farbfeld should be supported too, even only for the purpose of these external filters).
- viburnum 7y agoFirst they came for Gopher ...
- crazygringo 7y agoGood. Honestly it was always weird to me that browsers ever supported FTP in the first place, it seemed so arbitrary. (Why not gopher and telnet too?) You'll still be able to download an ftp: link by your browser opening your local FTP client, same as a magnet: opening your local torrenting client -- as it should be. And honestly, if you're one of the few people who actually need to regularly download files with FTP, don't you want a better standalone client anyways?
- kayamon 7y agoEarly browsers did in fact support gopher. (some still do)
- markbnj 7y agoI've used FTP for many years, and I still use it to manage the file system of my blog, which is running on a cheap VPS. I doubt, though, that even 1 in 100 non-technical Internet users knows what it is. There are several good clients available. I think you can even still use Windows Explorer. I can't think of a strong argument for Google to maintain support in Chrome.
- fastbmk 7y agoUnicorn startup idea: Build a FTP search engine!