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418 points akagusu | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.405s | source
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altmind ◴[] No.45955071[source]
Do you remember that chrome lost FTP support recently? The protocol was widely used and simple enough.
replies(2): >>45955175 #>>45956002 #
chb ◴[] No.45955175[source]
Widely used? By whom? Devs who don't understand rsync or scp? Give me a practical scenario where a box is running FTP but not SSH.

Edit: then account for the fact that this rare breed of content uploader doesn't use an FTP client... there's absolutely no reason to have FTP client code in a browser. It's an attack surface that is utterly unnecessary.

replies(4): >>45955278 #>>45955390 #>>45959190 #>>45959889 #
Demiurge ◴[] No.45955278[source]
Also, the protocol is pretty much a holdover from the earliest days, before encryption, or complicated NATs. I remember using it with just telnet a few times. It's pretty cool, but absolutely nobody should be using FTP these days. I remember saying this back in the 2005, and here we are 20 years later, someone still lamenting dropping FTP support from a browser? I think we're decades overdue.
replies(3): >>45955397 #>>45955700 #>>45956075 #
1. grumbel ◴[] No.45956075[source]
The problem wasn't that FTP got deprecated, but that we never got a proper successor. With FTP you could browse a directory tree like it was a real file system. With HTTP you can't, it has no concept of a directory. rsync is the closest thing to a real successor, but no Web browser support that either.
replies(2): >>45956428 #>>45959826 #
2. Demiurge ◴[] No.45956428[source]
I agree that we should get a successor, but if it got deprecated way back, I think we would have more likely gotten one. For just downloads, I have used apache and nginx directory and file listing functionality with ease.
3. catdog ◴[] No.45959826[source]
There would be WebDAV which adds such features to HTTP but that's also not supported by web browsers.