So I’ve spent some time trying to get this working but it’s not looking possible, which is a shame.
The FTP apps appear to only offer file promises when what we need is the file URL. This means the moment you try to drag out of the FTP app into Blocs it tries to create a copy locally, which is not what we want.
I like the idea of bulk import from a directory on a server but I fear it would all have to happen inside of Blocs and would likely require FTP integration, which is a whole other world of work.
On a plus, I have managed to add the functionality to drag local folders to the Asset Manager and have their contents added to a project, oh and keep the asset window visible when Blocs is not active.
I don’t know if this helps, but I’ve just selected a bunch of images on the server using Yummy FTP Pro and tried the option to copy as a web url. It copied the whole lot with a neat line break between each url, so I wonder if that could be imported to Blocs as a text file or by some other means to populate the asset manager with remote resources in a single step?
Yeah, I could add a bulk input options that takes a string and then the user sets and array separator in your case the array separator would be the line break.
I didn’t express myself very well here. What I meant is that it would be good to have an additional level of intelligence that when it sees a www.domain.com that it would intelligently add on the http:// to make it http://www.domain.com -if possible. This would allow you to copy a hosted URL from an FTP App and paste into the manager without having to enter the additional http:// for every image.
However, after a bit more investigation I have found a solution. I just fired up YummyFTP and that has 2 Copy functions. Copy URL and also Copy as Web URL. The Copy as Web URL uses what you have setup as the web url in the Yummy settings and replaces the public_html with http://www/domain.com if this is what you have setup. So Yummy does this correctly and works fine with the Add Hosted Asset function.
I use the copy as web url feature constantly in Yummy, both for web work and also if posting images on forums that require external hosting. You just have to set up the web url correctly in the bookmark preferences and it works a treat.