A lot of novice web crawlers find that figuring out what to do with files and programs they have downloaded is the most difficult thing that they have to deal with. In this article, I am going to try to explain some of the things that you may run into and how to handle them. All of the items I mention in this article are available at your local Info-Mac Mirror, or from the imbedded link.

The first thing you need know is that each Mac file or program is really two files. Well, not really, but close enough for our purposes. Each Mac file includes a data fork and a resource fork. The data fork holds any data that a file contains, and the resource fork includes the icon, type and creator information that helps the Finder do all of the nifty things it does. In the case of a program, the resource fork includes the majority of the guts of the program, and there is little in the data fork. In a word procesing or graphics file the opposite is true.

Non-Mac computers do not use the same system. In order to send a Mac file over the internet, where it will pass through any number of different machines, we have to make the Mac file more aggreeable to them. The file has to be encoded, whereby the datafork and resource fork are merged together. The most common encoding scheme you will see is the BinHex standard. Any file you see or download that ends in ".hqx" is a Bin Hexed file.

Claris Emailer and Eudora Light automatically encode and decode files sent as attachements. BinHex 4.0 is a standalone program that encodes and decodes files.

I prefer Stuffit Expander. With Aladdin's complimentary products - DropStuff and Expander Enhancer, Stuffit Expander can decode almost any encoding or compression scheme that you are likely to meet up with. It is simple to install and configure, and once set, can be pretty much ignored.

In any case, when you download a file that ends in ".hqx", drag and drop it onto your decoder of choice. The program will probably ask you to name the resulting file and pick a location for it. Once the file is decoded, you may still have some hoops to jump through before you can use it.

To cut down on transfer time, most files and programs available online are compressed in some way. Some compression programs allow you to create an archive that includes a mini-program that will de-archive itself. The names of these self-extracting-archive files typically end in ".sea". These files are easy to handle, just double click on the icon, and it will expand its contents into their original form. One problem with sea files is that the expansion program part of the file takes up about 32k (more or less depending on the program that created the archive.) Therefore, if you are making an sea of a small file, you may find that the archive is bigger than the original file was.

The Stuffit or ".sit" format is a common Mac compression format. Using Stuffit or DropStuff, a group of files can be neatly packaged into one file, and compressed down to take up less space. The names of these files traditionally end in ".sit" As you would expect, Stuffit Expander de-compresses these files and restores them to their original state. Compact Pro creates archive files whose names typically end in ".cpt". Now Compress archives end in ".now", and Disk Doubler archives end in ".dd" These last two archive types are pretty rare online, but it is handy to be able to recognize them when you see one. Stuffit Expander will expand Compact Pro archives. Now Expand is designed to handle Now archives, and DD Expand is meant for Disk Doubler archives. (All of these items are available at you local Info-Mac Mirror Site.)

Even after the file is de-hexed and uncompressed, there may be yet another step before you can use it. Sometimes the file you finall y end up with is actually a disk image. These files can be written onto a floppy, using Apple's Disk Copy Program. Once the files are written to a floppy, they can then be used or installed.

If you use ShrinkWrap, you can skip the step of writing the disk image to a floppy. ShrinkWrap lets disk image files pretend to be disks. If you drop a disk image onto ShrinkWrap, it appears as a floppy icon on the desktop. You can then treat the imaginary floppy as a real one, and install softweare from it.

This ShrinkWrap trick is very handy for administrators of large groups of Macs. Say you receive a new software package on twenty floppies and you need to install it on ten Macs. Use ShrinkWrap to create disk image files of the twenty floppies on a portable hard drive. Plug the portable drive into the first Mac you need to install the software on. Use ShrinkWrap to mount all twenty of the disk images. Since they are imaginary floppies, you can have all of the on the desktop at new time. Open the first of the imaginary floppies. Double click on the installer icon and go for a break. Rather than asking for each floppy and keeping you swapping disks for a whole morning, the installer will see each floppy image as a real floppy and carry on with the installation while you have a leisurely coffee break. Once the installation is complete, unmount all of the imaginary floppies and go on to the next machine.

Internet Config can help automate much of this translate/decode/expand routine. Using the File Mapping options, set Stuffit Expander to decode all files ending with "hqx" and to expand all files ending with "sit" or "cpt". Now, when you download a file, Stuffit Expander will intercept it, and do all of the work without your interference.