Total Commander

I frequently use Total Commander to access folders in FTP-sites. Often it is the same FTP sites so that the FTP-site may still be visible in a pane of TC or in the list of recent folders (Alt + Arrow Down). Now if TC was never closed down but the FTP connection has timed out and a file is copied from or to the FTP site, a dialogue asking to reconnect will appear. Since TC has not been closed down you can just click OK to reconnect. However, whatever command that you were attempting will not be done. You will need to repeat the command after clicking Ok to reconnect.

Now, If you are often going back to the same FTP site again and again it is somewhat tedious to keep having to OK this dialogue and re-enter your command every time. Also, it should not be necessary. TC could just reconnect automatically and perform the chosen command. At least that should be an option if not the default behaviour.

If TC was closed, later restarted and the FTP-site found in the recent folders list (Alt + Arrow Down) a fresh authentication (if required per the FTP-site definition) have to be done with username and password entry. This is of course fine. If you want to avoid that you can just enter both username and password in the FTP-definition -- less secure but doable. But the there is no way around reconnect after time out of the FTP, and that would be great to have.

TC tries to repeat some commands, but some like upload are not repeated because it cannot be guaranteed that you can always return to the right location. So please double check the location before restarting the command.

I noticed that e.g. the Ctrl + R (Refresh) command is done after the reconnect is done. However, I was thinking that perhaps even the question about reconnect is not necessary. It could just reconnect and then do the refresh (Ctrl + R).

As for upload or download I am not fully sure I get why this could also not just be done. Let's say that I in the left pane have an ftp-site "ftp-test\deploy" and in the right pane a local dir, e.g. c:\test. Now, say the FTP site has timed out and I want copy files either way. TC do "know" which location I wish to go to from the info in the left pane. Why can it not just reconnect automatically and check that the same location (and possible files) are available and if so just do everything no questions asked (if I have specified it so in the setup).

This may seem trivial but when working with FTP a lot every day and timeouts usually being out quite fast (perhaps 2-3 minutes), it gets tedious having to approve a reconnect and enter commands again over and over. The less you have to do the better. Those who wish for a lot of confirmation could just leave the setup as it is -- i.e. that all this confirmation should take place. But for me it would be ideal that the TC just go ahead and do it if everything checks out, e.g. if I use Alt + Arrow Down to go to a specific directory in an FTP site from earlier, it should just reconnect and refresh right away.

Yes, auto-reconnecting, without asking, would be a nice improvement.

The FTP location may become unavailable even without disconnecting from the server, for example after deleting the remote directory with another instance of Total Commander. And Total Commander perfectly handles such cases - the copy dialog displays error 550 "No such file or directory", and also a message box appears and says "Transfer failed, continue operation?".

So there is really no need to ask the user about reconnecting every time.

Regards