I always used CuteFTP and it was great. After I changed my connection from ISDN (don't laugh) to Cable-modem, CuteFTP takes a loooong time to load and present the connect dialog. I recently tried the built-in FTP in TotalCommander and it is really fast.
Another nice background would be an image showing a gradient. You can make it small enough (say 800x5 pixels) and fill it from light-blue to white.Then just use it as background image.