Let me just say that Transmit 3 from Panic Software is a wonderful program, and my current favorite FTP program. The one thing that has been marring its beauty for me was my inability to navigate through directories or transfer files using the keyboard.

I’m a big fan of keyboard navigation. I’m still something of a novice at it in many ways, but now that I’m doing a lot more coding I’ve been forced to find the hotkeys and shortcuts that I didn’t bother to learn before (thank goodness for KeyCue). In fact, the only thing really standing in my way when it came to Website Coding Keyboard Nirvana was my reliance on the mouse in Transmit.

But it finally pissed me off so bad that I took the time to sit down and whang at my keyboard until I hit something that worked.

Here’s the the secret: cmd-↓ (command + down arrow). This one simple shortcut transfers files, opens directories, and improves your chances with beautiful women. It really is a miracle worker.

Now perhaps for the hard-core keyboard navigators among us this shortcut is all too obvious. It turns out that it’s an Apple standard; cmd-↑ and cmd-↓ can also be used to navigate through the Finder. I’m sure the real mice-burners are laughing at me, but it just wasn’t a shortcut that I was familiar with. I’m used to using cmd-O in the Finder, and to be honest I’ve never taken the time to learn its keyboard navigation secrets because I got hooked on Path Finder’s excellent shelf system before I started really making an effort to navigate using only the keyboard.

In any case, when I went looking for the shortcut in Fetch I discovered what is possibly the worst decision next to leaving any reference to the shortcut out of the program entirely: the only place where I can find it mentioned is in the preferences.

That’s right. It’s not in the documentation. It’s not in the menus. It’s in ten point font in the preferences. I ask you: who looks in the preferences for a keyboard shortcut? Sure, if the program allows you to create your own (Transmit doesn’t). But normally? Panic, where’s the excellent interface love that is so evident throughout the rest of the program?

In any case, I can at last navigate through Transmit without leaving the keyboard, which, despite my recent trackball purchase, is bound to make my wrists that much happier, not to mention speeding things up.

Now if only there were a standard shortcut for switching between tabs, my life would truly be perfect.