Ok you have a file called Widgets, that is 30megs, and you need to send it to a freind. Well thats kinda big and to email something that size would take 5 hours. So You take this file and compress it to 12megs so you can send it.
You do this with Drop-Stuff. Basically you just drag and drop the file into Drop-Stuff, and voila you have a compressed archive. You will notice that what used to be called Widgets at 30megs is not called Widgets.sit at 12megs.
Now lets say I am sending it to a freind who doesnt have any decompression software. If I send it as Widgets.sit they will have no way to open it. And if they try, their computer will say that the application that created it cannot be found. Does this sound familiar? The answer to this is to compress is as a Self Expanding Archive. Then the file will be called Widgets.sea. That way Your freind will be able to click on it and it will expand all by itself.
To Recap: .sit needs decompression software and .sea is self-expanding.
◊Decompression
Two words: Stuffit-Expander.
If you get a file that is named forinstance Widgets.sit. You need to drag and drop it in Stuffit-Expander for it to be decompressed. Very Easy. Very Strait Forward.
Now sometimes you will see files that are marked Widgets.sit.hqx or Widgets.sit.bin.
These are files than have been compressed and then encoded for Electronic transfers through the net. Widgets.sit.hqx has been Binhexed. Binhexing makes the entire archive into a text file. Widgets.sit.bin has been put in an encoder called MacBinary.
Both .hqx and .bin files can be translated and decompressed with Stuffit-Expander.
Segmentation◊
Now Lets say you have your own FTP and you want people to be able to download it.
I don't know about you, but the idea of downloading a 12meg archive makes me ill.
The solution to this is to segment the archive.
This entails using Drop-Segment. Drop-Segment will break your archive into smaller portions, that usually will fit on a 1.4m high density disk. You can however adjust the size to whatever you feel is best. To put all the pieces back together again, you just have to select all the segments and drag them into Stuffit-Expander. Its really kewl.
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Aladdinsys, is the maker of all these Items. We suggest that you get Stuffit Deluxe 4.0, which includes all this software and More.