NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article
Fun Stuff
by Betty Davis, Vice President, December 97
bpake@juno.com
(click to email author)


Recently I got embroiled in a little program that you might enjoy. I learned about it from an e-mail friend in San Antonio. Seems he had a whiz- bang combination birthday party and Halloween party and wanted me to see the photos. Of course, no computer person is going to just have the film developed and send printed copies to friends. He sent the film to a place called FilmWorks where they process the film and then make it available for downloading. All the photographer has to do is supply his ID number and roll number to his friends, who then download the photos.

Aha! Now the fun begins. First of all I had to download the free viewing software, PhotoWorks v 2.31. OK, no problem. That went so well it should have been a warning. I think you know by this time that when things go without a hitch that something bad is going to happen. Well, of course! This is a computer we're dealing with here.

I went to the website http://www.photoworks.com and immediately messed up. I entered the necessary information for the film and it downloaded it to my recipe program. Well, not exactly, because I got an error message that two files were missing in the recipe program. It would download 99% and then the error message would appear. My mistake was that I wasn't careful when I clicked the download directory my machine presented. Ordinarily things go to a Temp file and I just didn't pay attention.

So I tried it again thinking I would catch it the second time. No way. The recipe program was embedded as the download directory and there was no way I could get around it. What to do? E-mail FilmWorks, of course. By this time, the deadline to access the photos was getting closer and this whole thing was turning into a real challenge for me.

I received this reply: (This is my underlining below).

When Netscape encounters an unknown file type, it prompts you with the option to "choose a plug-in" to open it or "save" the file to your hard disk. You do not want to choose a plug in. The file needs to be downloaded to your hard drive. Once you do choose a plug-in, that plug-in will always launch when you a attempt to download and thus corrupt the file. The only way to bypass this is to hold down the shift key on your keyboard and left click with your mouse on the link that downloads the file. Choose the "save" option that will appear in the box. This will download the file to your hard disk. You can then open the file from within the Photoworks program.

I must say that when I got it right and finally downloaded the film it was worth it. I always hate to miss a good party and this one was a winner. Especially the belly dancer, to whom a lot of the film was devoted. Hummmmmm. Wonder who took the pictures.

Sorry this is so long but I hope it may solve a problem you've run into before. Oh, and one last thing. I was having a problem accessing the photos from the software program, so I took the simple way out...just used Drag and Drop and it worked fine. So it isn't the technical way to do it...hey, whatever works!

Merry Christmas to all.

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