ACCESSING YOUR iDISK'S PUBLIC FOLDER

Apple's online 'MobileMe' service supplants its previous '.Mac' service, and provides online email, contacts, calendar and picture gallery, and server space called 'iDisk' which can be accessed via a web browser or, on a Mac, mounted on the Desktop as a network disk. This includes a 'Public Folder' where you can place files for other people to download without giving them access to other parts of your iDisk.

People often confuse the password for their iDisk and the password (if set) for their Public Folder. In System Preferences>MobileMe>Account (in Leopard, or Prefs>.Mac in earlier OSX) you should have the main account password and username set. (Note that if you want to access your iDisk you use your username without the '@mac.com'.)

In System Preferences>MobileMe (or .Mac)>iDisk you can choose to have the Public Folder read-only or read-and-write. You can also set a password, which must not be the same as your account password. You can also set the password from the online page at http://me.com/idisk - click on the Tools button in the toolbar  - and choose 'Preferences'. 

Here you can choose whether to allow people to make changes (the equivalent of 'Read and Write' in System Preferences>MobileMe) and set the password for your Public Folder if required. 

People can access the Public Folder using a browser at
http://public.me.com/USERNAME. Or if they have Macs they can use Finder menu Go>iDisk>Other User's Public Folder to mount it on the desktop.

Windows (or Mac) users can use either the online application or a downloadable application at http://www.anyclient.com to connect to the iDisk: I have not tested this so cannot personally recommend it but others have had success with it.

If you have set a password visitors will be asked to enter it (the previous requirement to enter the username 'public' has been removed).  However you should be aware that files placed in the Public folder appear at http://homepage.mac.com/username/.Public/filename whether or not the Public folder is password protected. Of course people would have to know the file name to be able to access it this way, which does offer a fair level of privacy.

You can download a file by selecting it and clicking on the download button (top right in the picture): you can download a folder, or more than one file at a time by shift-clicking (or command-shift-clicking [Mac] to select non-adjacent files) - they will be zipped to make a single download. Your filenames should contain only letters, numbers, hyphens, underscore and spaces: no odd characters such as # which can cause problems. The button with the up arrow in the toolbar is used to select files on your computer to upload.

If you are using a Mac and have mounted the folder on the desktop it appears as a network drive and you can download and upload folders or groups of files in the usual way, by dragging them. Note that this process can be quite slow, and that the Finder can falsely claim to have completed the process and be finishing it - this goes on for some time, but the actual upload isn't complete until the Finder dialog disappears. (Also note that if you have turned on 'iDisk syncing' the file won't be available until syncing is complete, which can take quite a long time.) You might think it worth investing $29.95 in Transmit, which will access, upload to and download from your iDisk faster and more reliably than the Finder.

I have posted some basic MobileMe 'how-to's here.