Sharing Rich Media Documents for Mere Mortals
What's the best way to share complex or large
documents with other people? Sometimes email just won't do.
A few days ago, I got an email from a client asking
why some of her friends hadn't been able to read a pdf that she had attached to
an email message. She thought that the problem was some deficiency or
misconfiguration in Mail. I looked at the raw message and it looked fine. When
I sent it on to a Windows machine, the pdf could be
opened.
I have come to the conclusion that the problem is that the recipients' machines are misconfigured or that they are behind strong firewalls and/or extremely zealous virus protection. So what can you do in a situation like that? You can't go around reconfiguring all your friends' computers, even assuming you have the knowledge and inclination to do so. And, as a refugee from corporate America, I guarantee that no one is going to be able to get IT to ease up on firewall restrictions just so that they can receive fancy invitations in email.
I think the best way is to use the web. That's what it's for. "But I don't know how to write HTML", I hear you crying (Maybe now you're crying "What's HTML?"). HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the language that web pages are written in. It's really not too hard to write a simple page, but complexity gets a bit trickier. That's why it's nice that programs that can produce complex output can usually export to HTML. This includes Microsoft Office (Word, Excel and PowerPoint), Pages (from iWork) and even lowly TextEdit. Admittedly, the code produced by these programs is not as pristine or efficient as hand-tuned HTML, but then again, not many folks look at the actual HTML, and the results are reasonably close to what you had intended.
The way you produce HTML varies from program to program, but is relatively straightforward. The Office programs all have a "Save as Web Page" menu item under "File". In Pages, you need to select "Export" from the "File" menu and then click the "HTML" button. In TextEdit, HTML is an option in the popup menu in the "Save As" dialog. In any case you will need to navigate to a place to save, and to give it a name. For the name, stick to text and numbers - no punctuation and no spaces. There are exceptions (_ and -, for instance), but it's best to keep it simple. The Office applications will append .htm (a holdover from the old DOS 8.3 limitation), while Pages and TextEdit will append the more proper .html. I recommend navigating to a blank folder, or creating one, before saving. That way, you know all of the files that the application creates for this. You will need them all.
So, now that you have your HTML, what do you do with it? That depends on what kind of web host you have at your disposal. If you are a .Mac member, then this part is really easy. Simply drag the files your app made into the Sites folder in your iDisk. The URL depends on the file name you gave it in the previous step and your .Mac member name. For instance, let's say I have created a file called myInvite.html. My .Mac name is carlile. So the result would be http://homepage.mac.com/carlile/myInvite.html.
If you are not a .Mac member, you still have some options. Most ISPs provide a small amount of web host space. And you may have your own domain. If you are going to use your ISP's web host, you will need to get information from them on how to upload files and what the format of your resulting URL will be. Likewise, if you have a domain, your domain host can fill you in on those details. Most likely, you will need an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) client such as Fetch, Transmit, or Captain FTP. Of course, you could also use the Unix ftp command in the Terminal, but if you know how do use that you're not likely to need the rest of this article, and probably haven't read this far.
However you do it, you can now include the URL in the message you send to people. Don't forget to include the whole thing, including the http://. Otherwise , the recipient mail programs are likely to not mark it as a URL.
I have come to the conclusion that the problem is that the recipients' machines are misconfigured or that they are behind strong firewalls and/or extremely zealous virus protection. So what can you do in a situation like that? You can't go around reconfiguring all your friends' computers, even assuming you have the knowledge and inclination to do so. And, as a refugee from corporate America, I guarantee that no one is going to be able to get IT to ease up on firewall restrictions just so that they can receive fancy invitations in email.
I think the best way is to use the web. That's what it's for. "But I don't know how to write HTML", I hear you crying (Maybe now you're crying "What's HTML?"). HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the language that web pages are written in. It's really not too hard to write a simple page, but complexity gets a bit trickier. That's why it's nice that programs that can produce complex output can usually export to HTML. This includes Microsoft Office (Word, Excel and PowerPoint), Pages (from iWork) and even lowly TextEdit. Admittedly, the code produced by these programs is not as pristine or efficient as hand-tuned HTML, but then again, not many folks look at the actual HTML, and the results are reasonably close to what you had intended.
The way you produce HTML varies from program to program, but is relatively straightforward. The Office programs all have a "Save as Web Page" menu item under "File". In Pages, you need to select "Export" from the "File" menu and then click the "HTML" button. In TextEdit, HTML is an option in the popup menu in the "Save As" dialog. In any case you will need to navigate to a place to save, and to give it a name. For the name, stick to text and numbers - no punctuation and no spaces. There are exceptions (_ and -, for instance), but it's best to keep it simple. The Office applications will append .htm (a holdover from the old DOS 8.3 limitation), while Pages and TextEdit will append the more proper .html. I recommend navigating to a blank folder, or creating one, before saving. That way, you know all of the files that the application creates for this. You will need them all.
So, now that you have your HTML, what do you do with it? That depends on what kind of web host you have at your disposal. If you are a .Mac member, then this part is really easy. Simply drag the files your app made into the Sites folder in your iDisk. The URL depends on the file name you gave it in the previous step and your .Mac member name. For instance, let's say I have created a file called myInvite.html. My .Mac name is carlile. So the result would be http://homepage.mac.com/carlile/myInvite.html.
If you are not a .Mac member, you still have some options. Most ISPs provide a small amount of web host space. And you may have your own domain. If you are going to use your ISP's web host, you will need to get information from them on how to upload files and what the format of your resulting URL will be. Likewise, if you have a domain, your domain host can fill you in on those details. Most likely, you will need an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) client such as Fetch, Transmit, or Captain FTP. Of course, you could also use the Unix ftp command in the Terminal, but if you know how do use that you're not likely to need the rest of this article, and probably haven't read this far.
However you do it, you can now include the URL in the message you send to people. Don't forget to include the whole thing, including the http://. Otherwise , the recipient mail programs are likely to not mark it as a URL.
Posted: Thu - August 9, 2007 at 05:46 PM
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Published On: Aug 10, 2007 09:25 AM
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Published On: Aug 10, 2007 09:25 AM