Problems with standalones mac/windows

[Thomas J McGrath III]

Yes, I was strictly keeping Andrews problem in mind. I agree with 
everything you said and I was aware off what typically happens when a 
mime type is missing.
Since he was using an earthlink email address and was only sharing 
among friends I suggested the easiest approach - "Simply download the 
file to disk" and I have yet had any problems with users downloading 
the  .sit or .zip or .gzip or .hqx files.

I tried uploading an .htaccess file to comcast/ISP and was unsuccessful 
in setting it up. I was trying to put some password protection on my 
site. I'm fairly new to apache but comcast is difficult to deal with. 
I'm sure if I was running my own server it would be a logical and easy 
fix but dealing with outside ISP servers is a real pain sometimes.

Thanks

Tom

On Jan 15, 2004, at 11:55 PM, Alex Rice wrote:

>
> On Jan 15, 2004, at 7:48 PM, Thomas J McGrath III wrote:
>
>> It is much simpler of a problem to fix.
>> Just have the user hold the control key and choose 'download link to 
>> disk' in OSX.  I think you can hold the option/alt key down while 
>> clicking with the mouse and go right to the download.
>
> Maybe special keystrokes to do a download is fine for Andrew's needs - 
> a game shared among friends, but in a hi-profile situation it won't be 
> adequate.
>
> Also switching to a particular file type, say .sit or .hqx, hoping 
> that is will known by the web browser is also problematic. It's a 
> gamble. What if they have an old or misconfigured browser? What if you 
> think it should be known by the browser but it really is not? What if 
> the user deleted their MIME type settings or helper application 
> settings? So it's just a partial solution.
>
>> The other simple solution is to convert the file from a .rev file 
>> which acts more like a text file(which loads in a browser window), to 
>> a .sit or .hqx etc. file which will then 'auto' download when clicked 
>> because that is browser expected behavior for those formats.
>
> I used to work for a ISP/web hosting provider so bear with me. I'm not 
> sure you understand the cause of the problem. If you do, then I 
> apologize for the noise.
>
> You can try any file type, binary or text, and if the web server MIME 
> type config doesn't map the file extension, and the web browser 
> doesn't have that file extension in it's MIME types and/or helper 
> applications preferences, then guess what happens: the browser tries 
> to display it as text, even if it's binary.
>
> That's what the application/octet-stream MIME type is for- it says to 
> the web browser "hey if you don't have a preference what to do with 
> this file, here is the MIME type to use" and the the web browser goes 
> "Oh! application/octet-stream- I'm supposed to download that and save 
> it to disk"
>
> The correct solution with Apache server is as simple as uploading a 
> .htaccess file into your web directory (for most ISPs). That's a 
> pretty simple solution, considering you do it once and the problem 
> goes away forever.
>
> Hope this helps,
>
> Alex Rice <alex at mindlube.com> | Mindlube Software | 
> <http://mindlube.com>
>
> what a waste of thumbs that are opposable
> to make machines that are disposable  -Ani DiFranco
>
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>

Macintosh PowerBook G-4 OSX 10.3.1, OS 9.2.2, 1.25 GHz, 512MB RAM, Rev 
2.1.2


Advanced Media Group
Thomas J McGrath III	• 2003 •	3mcgrath at adelphia.net
220 Drake Road, Bethel Park, PA 15102