Upon running FTPShortcut.exe for the first time, it will confirm if you want to continue running it from the initial location and you will have the chance to move it to a better place if you wish. It sets itself up on your system by writing a few entries in the system's Registry, by adding the keys HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.fss and HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\fss-file. These can be removed by clicking on the 'Unregister' button (in the 'About' window), for when you decide to remove this utility or move it to a different location.

The registry entries are the secret to making it integrate with the operating system, and result in a new addition to the 'New' menu which appears in the 'File' and popup (right-click) menu in any folder. That new entry is shown as 'FTP Shortcut Settings'. Selecting this will create an empty file.

Right-clicking on this new file will bring up the popup menu again, and the two important options for this is 'Open' and 'Edit'. Selecting 'Edit' will open the file in this utility so that you can review and change the settings. Selecting 'Open' does the same as double-clicking on the file, and a browser window should open to the FTP site (specified in the file). If the file is newly created (empty), double-clicking it will open up the editor. If the file has been locked with a SECOND password, you will be asked to enter the password when you try to open or edit the file. If you enter it correctly it will continue to open the file or open it in the editor. If you get the password wrong it will repeat until you decide to press 'Cancel' and it will abort the opening or editing of the file.

The main window of this utility is quite straight-forward. There are 3 edit boxes where you enter the address of the FTP site, the Username and the Password, and a check-box labelled 'Protect with second password', which when checked will expand the window to reveal a further TWO edit boxes where you can enter a name and a SECOND password. There are four buttons at the bottom of the window.

The buttons are explained as follows:

'About..':
This takes you to a screen for more information about the program.

'Test':
This launches a browser window with the current settings and it will not close the utility window.

'Save Shortcut':
When this is clicked is will save the settings. If the settings are successfully saved, the utility window will close.

'Cancel':
Closes the utility window without any further action taken.

The settings you enter are saved to a file with an extension of .fss, and the registry entries associate this extension with the utility, so that when the settings file is opened or edited it runs the FTPShortcut.exe program.

The difference between these files and a normal Windows FTP shortcut is that the settings are mildy encrypted to make it harder for someone to find out the password.

The contents of the .fss file are encrypted, so even with locking the file with a second password, nobody will be able to find out the information. This is only a light security measure and I cannot guarantee that someone couldn't find out the information if they knew what they were doing, but it's one step safer than having a normal Windows Shortcut which they could view the 'Properties' of and immediately see the username and password in the URL (in the format ftp://username:password@ftpsite.com).

That is why this program would be more suited for those who don't wish to use a fully-featured FTP client. I designed this program to be as simple as possible.

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