Internet Explorer Help

This page includes information that may be helpful in using Internet Explorer to connect to GuildFTPD (or any other FTP server). The settings and recommendations are shown here from personal testing and may not be accurate. Keep in mind, changing these settings is the same as changing an option within a FTP client.

The following is a quick chart that is designed to help you reference how the FTP features and settings of Internet Explorer 5.5 work when connected to GuildFTPD. It may not make any sense until you read the details below.

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO?	IE 5.5 OPTIONS	SETTING	RESTART IE REQUIRED? (if setting changed)	LOGIN METHOD

UPLOAD FILES
	Enable folder view for FTP sites	CHECKED	YES	EITHER
	Use Passive FTP for compatibility with some firewalls and DSL modems	CHECKED	NO
	Temporary Internet Files / Settings button	Every time you start Internet Explorer	YES

DOWNLOAD FILES
	Enable folder view for FTP sites	ANY	YES	EITHER
	Use Passive FTP for compatibility with some firewalls and DSL modems	CHECKED	NO
	Temporary Internet Files / Settings button	Every time you start Internet Explorer	YES

VIEW FILES (PICTURES, TEXT, PDF)
	Enable folder view for FTP sites	UNCHECKED - v 0.993 or earlier ANY - v 0.994	YES	ftp :// <username> : <password> @ <ftp site> : <port>
	Use Passive FTP for compatibility with some firewalls and DSL modems	CHECKED	NO
	Temporary Internet Files / Settings button	Every time you start Internet Explorer	YES

Enable folder view for FTP sites:

Set in, Tools menu - Internet Options - Advanced TAB

This option controls how IE displays the files.

CHECKED, this option shows the same icons for files and folders that you would see if you were browsing your local computer's hard drive. The drawback to using this option with GuildFTPD is that you can't open files directly from the server by double-clicking them. You have to download them first and then view them.

UNCHECKED will cause IE to display text links for files. The benefit here is that you will now be able to click on text, picture and other viewable files and look at them from the server, before you download them.

NOTE: This option works differently depending on what FTP server you connect to. Some don't seem to have a problem displaying the contents of files when this option is CHECKED.

If you change whether or not this is CHECKED or UNCHECKED, you need to close IE and re-open it before the change occurs.

Use Passive FTP for compatibility with some firewalls and DSL modem

Set in, Tools menu - Internet Options - Advanced TAB

This option allows IE to establish a passive FTP session. CHECK or UNCHECK it as needed.

Temporary Internet Files / SETTINGS button

Set in, Tools menu - Internet Options - General TAB - SETTINGS button

This option sets up how often it will go back out the Internet to get the current content of a web site (or FTP server's file listing). You will want to change this if you're experiencing a problem where you've deleted, added or modified files on the server and those changes aren't showing up.

LOGIN METHOD

There are two ways to login to a FTP site from within IE.

The first is to use the following format in the address line: (ignore the spaces)
ftp :// <username> : <password> @ <ftp site> : <port>
example: ftp://anonymous:notvalid@ftp.microsoft.com:21

The second is only available if you've CHECKED the Enable folder view for FTP sites option. Once you're connected to the FTP site as anonymous, you can choose the File menu, Login As.. option. If you attempt to access a site that requires login, you'll get prompted for a user name and password before it finishes loading.

ADDITIONAL INFO / LIMITATIONS

There are currently a few limitations of using IE 5.5 with GuildFTPD.

# 1 - ONLY IN VERSION 0.993 and earlier - GuildFTPD doesn't get along with IE when trying to display the contents of a file when double-clicked while the folder view is enabled. It could be a bug, it could be IE. Since you can view files fine when you uncheck the Enable folder view for FTP sites, it's not too major.

# 2 - IE and GuildFTPD don't work well together when all of the following conditions occur....
- You've got a firewall / DSL router on your internal network
- You've got GuildFTPD configured with a specified Passive IP
- You're trying to connect from your internal network to GuildFTPD with the Enable folder view for FTP sites unchecked and the Use Passive FTP checked.

In a nutshell, GuildFTPD is responding back with the WAN IP address, which basically confuses IE because it made its connection on the internal one.

Since it only affects connectivity to your server from within your network, you could do one of two things:
1. Connect with a FTP client when uploading/downloading files from within your network.
2. Install GuildFTPD to a different directory, set it up the same (copy your default.usr and default.opt files from your other directory into the second one), and just set to the port to 21 with the Passive IP option off.

Option 2 allows you to test IE with GuildFTPD, as long as any changes you make to one version, you make to the other.
.... and, yes, you can run two copies of GuildFTPD... as long as they are in different directories and use different ports.