With more and more people using remote servers nowadays, usually via SSH or FTP, the challenge of uploading data/editing data is ever growing.

I personally SSH to my remote servers and use command line tools such as Vim to edit files.  But you may not have SSH access, and only FTP access – in that case, you’d need to edit the files locally, open another application and upload them manually.

There are times though, when I like to use desktop applications such as Textmate to edit files remotely on various servers via SSH – but, of course, Finder and the applications on my computer wouldn’t be able to see them – until now!

Macfusion solves this problem.  Along with MacFUSE, it allows you to “mount” the remote server space you have as a normal network drive.  What this means is, if you go to File -> Open in any application locally, you’ll see the remote drive.  You’ll be able to see, copy, move, and even create new files directly on the remote server – infact, it acts exactly like any other drive would.

I’d highly recommend you take a look – both tools are free to download (the GUI and the underlying daemons) and I’ll guarantee once you start mounting your remote server space, you’ll wonder how you ever managed with older methods!

Macfusion: http://www.macfusionapp.org/about.html
MacFUSE:  http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/

You’ll need both of the above.


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