Total Commander

How to Pause/Start the transfer...
How to select items in the list of transfers...

... by using the keyboard?

I'm asking these questions as maybe there are (very well hidden) keyboard equivalents for such actions.

It wasn't until recently that I figured out that Num+ may be used to add items in the list.

You all went back to using explorer?

roentgen wrote:You all went back to using explorer?

No, but I almost never use BTM for FTP, so I had nothing to say here. (Just because I found foreground transfer more handy.)
I agree that BTM for FTP could use some improvements.

• The start/stop button seems to have no hotkey (+/- work from the NumPad, like F1 tells).
• The TAB key doesn't work here to jump around with the cursor.
• The cursor seems to be nowhere on startup of BTM (not on any button like start/stop, not in the file list).
• It starts a new, additional connection to the target - if there is an error like

  "530 Sorry, the maximum number of clients (2) from your host is already connected..."

  you'll have to quit the connection in the main window first, before you can disconnect the main window to allow the BTM to connect instead. Additionally:
• To do the disconnect in the main windows after an error like described above, there is no way to do that with the keyboard (on Alt-TAB the main window and the dialog have the same icon) - so you're forced to use the mouse to click into TC's main window. After all much too complicated IMHO.
• After aborting (pressing abort multiple times or using window close button because no reaction for a long time) it sometimes doesn't disconnect, so the maximum number of connects to this server may be exceeded on the next connect.

2StatusQuo
Very well said... but:

- BTM may be also used for normal filesystem operations, which I normally do most of the times.
- Num- key works but how about removing a specific transfer from the list? That means one has to select that item in the list which currently isn't possible.

2roentgen:

- BTM may be also used for normal filesystem operations, which I normally do most of the times.

You're right, I didn't test this.
In this case I usually start the copy process in foreground and then press the "Background" button if needed. This uses another background method, where SPACE-key is enough to pause/start, but this method doesn't wait for other file transfer to finish first...

- Num- key works but how about removing a specific transfer from the list? That means one has to select that item in the list which currently isn't possible.

Indeed, I have to add (additionally to the missing TAB switching mentioned above):

• Marking list entries with Ctrl+A doesn't work, neither does Shift+Cursor
  (the only working way seems to be pressing SPACE on each single file).

Back to the initial suggestion (as I tried+used BTM some more in the meantime):

I just wrote an AHK workaround to navigate through BTM with TAB / Shift+TAB.
It can be found in TCWiki.

HTH. Adding some specific hotkeys to start/stop the transfer shouldn't be hard to do, if desired.