I just found this Mac OS X feature I hadn’t known about before. In an email from a client was an FTP link to my client’s website. Normally, of course, when you click on a link in an email it opens up in your web browser, so I was expecting Safari to open a window with a list of files on the web server. Instead, I got a new Finder window displaying the website’s contents as icons. The home directory of the website showed up as a volume on all my Finder windows, so I can drag and drop files to and from my computer and the server just like they were windows on my home network. Cool! Yet another reason to love Mac OS.

NOTE: This method of accessing web servers is no more secure than typing an address in your web browser in the form “ftp://username:password@yourdomain.com” (which then shows the list of web files in your browser window). The username and password are sent in the clear, while most times when you log in to a website your info will be sent using the more secure POST method. But still, if security isn’t an issue—like, maybe an anonymous FTP site—being able to drag and drop in the Finder is pretty damn convenient.