One of the benefits to subscribing to a .Mac account is the ability to save files to a remote location. Apple calls this location an '"iDisk". It's very convenient to do this not only to act as a backup for a small amount of files, but it's also great for file sharing with others.

Traditionally, you would access this iDisk location via your Finder. This is nice because it's integrated with the rest of your Mac, but it can be a little slow at times (not to mention a slight hassle if you don't have your Mac with you at all times).

Apple recently announced a new method of accessing your iDisk... via the web! To access your iDisk, you would go to http://idisk.mac.com/username (where username would be your own .Mac username). After proper authentication, the resulting page would look similar to this:

As you would expect, it's a very easy-to-use interface, and you can quickly and easily browse through your iDisk contents. To upload a file (or files), simply click on the "Upload" button, and choose the files you wish to upload. Conversely, if you want to delete a file (or files), simply highlight that file, and click on the small delete button to the right.

As you may know from a previous Mac Tip, there is a folder called "Public". This is designed to be a publicly accessible bin. A place where you can place any file, and the world can see it without limitations (obviously you would need to choose carefully what files are copied to this folder). Apple also made it easy for anyone to access your Public folder. To do this, they would use the following formatted URL:

http://idisk.mac.com/username-Public*
(where username would be the .Mac username to which they are accessing)

The resulting page shows only those items which are located inside of the Public folder of your iDisk (as well as sub-folders, etc). Below is a sample of my Public iDisk folder:

By default, the general public has read-only access to your Public folder. To give others write-access (which may be useful for sending and receiving large files), go to System Preferences, and click on .Mac. On the iDisk tab, you will want to choose "Read & Write" under the section called "Your Public Folder". As you can see from my settings below, you can also choose to password-protect this feature (which is usually a good idea).

* This path is case-sensitive. The "P" in "Public" MUST be capitalized