Save, Save, Save ... but why?

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Level 1

25 points

Save, Save, Save ... but why?

I've just lost an hour and a half of work in iWeb because it froze up during a simple save procedure. The bad part is I had not been saving throughout the 90 minutes. So my advice to all iWeb users is save early and often. Which makes me think of the bad old days with Windows when you needed to save every little thing because chances were that it would crash. (And is a crash that much different than freezing up?)

But my question is why? It seems that all the other iLife programs have automatic save features or at least enough that you don't lose everything. The bad part is we get spoiled and forget that not all Mac programs are equal. Granted, iWeb is complex but so is iMovie.

Well, back to work. Thanks for listening. 🙂

Mac Pro 2x2.66 Dual-Core Intel Xeon, Mac OS X (10.5.7), iLife '09, Apeture, Photoshop, Nikon D80 and Canon HD-30

Posted on Dec 27, 2009 9:36 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Old Toad

Level 10

207,421 points

Dec 27, 2009 9:41 AM in response to alice_srq

What, if any, Console messages do you get after the freeze? It might give an indication of what iWeb is choking on.

Launch Console and look under Console messages or iWeb itself.

Happy New Year

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Answer 2

alice_srq Author

Level 1

25 points

Dec 27, 2009 10:34 AM in response to Old Toad

Hi OT,

Thanks for such a quick reply. I've actually isolated the problem but haven't worked around it yet. The problem appears to be a hyperlink I am trying to embed in a page which leads people to PDF files that they can download and read. I went to my iMac disk >Web>Sites and created a Download Folder into which I moved the PDF file. Then using iWeb's Insert Hyperlink I created a hyperlink to that folder. Whenever I do that and then try to save the iWeb file it freezes on me.

I read in the forum that it might be better to create a link like this:

http://www.aliceswanderland.com/Download Folder/New Year 2010.PDF

I tried doing that with the HTML snippet but the font color isn't compatible with my page and I can't figure out how to change that. So then I just typed the text on the page and created a hyperlink using the Inspector but I get a Page Not Found notice when I click on it.

Appreciate any help and I'll keep plugging away too.

Alice

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Answer 3

alice_srq Author

Level 1

25 points

Dec 27, 2009 11:19 AM in response to Old Toad

OT,

An update: I have managed to make the link work by removing the spaces on the file names. I clicked on the link and now my problem is the length of time it is taking for the download of the PDF files (which are zipped). More than 10 minutes on my Mac Pro which is a relatively fast machine. Can't imagine what it will take on some others. This project is a year-end newsletter and I want it to be easy for folks to access but so far it is anything but.

THanks for your response and help. I'm off to search for help with speeding up zip downloads.

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Answer 4

alice_srq Author

Level 1

25 points

Dec 27, 2009 11:22 AM in response to alice_srq

Even though I discovered that the freeze up of iWeb was caused by a link I had embedded I stand by my initial question of why the save feature in iWeb is so weak when other iLife programs have as much complexity but better save capabilities.

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Answer 5

Old Toad

Level 10

207,421 points

Dec 27, 2009 11:55 AM in response to alice_srq

Don't know why. If there's a interruption or a freeze with the domain file open some of the files inside may be closed improperly and damaged. The iPhoto library is that way and Apple met the problem with a rebuild option from backed up database files. Send a feature request to Apple via http://www.apple.com/feedback/iweb.html.

How big is the zipped file?

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Answer 6

Mar 5, 2010 12:05 AM in response to Old Toad

This same thing happened to me just now, second time in two weeks. I had just worked 1.5 hours non-stop on a site and it completely froze when I went to save it, lost ALL my work! This is unacceptable and needs to be addressed ASAP.

I also had a PDF linked to it, which seems to make sense since this happened to the prior user. This is especially frustrating as I am an Apple Consultant, and just like poster mentioned above, we need to act like PC users, saving every few minutes for the fear of the program crashing!

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Answer 7

Ethmoid

Level 6

11,482 points

Mar 5, 2010 12:13 AM in response to Tom Lambotte

Making links to pdf files should not make any difference at all. I have one page on my site that has links to at least six different pdf files that can be downloaded from my site and my domain file has never frozen. No problems.

When you link to pdf files anyway, all you are doing is typing in text on your page and making a link to a pdf file that is already on your hard drive somewhere. These pdf links will not work until you publish/upload your site, when all your pdf files will be uploaded to your server so that when someone clicks on your links, the file will be downloaded.

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Answer 8

Mar 5, 2010 12:28 AM in response to Ethmoid

It turns out I got lucky this time. Couple weeks ago, I lost everything. This time, most of my work had been saved, save for one page which was actually not too complicated, whew!

So once i had it back up, I tried publishing my site to a folder (I use Transmit to upload it) and it gave an error when trying to publish it. I then took out the one PDF that was linked, tried again and it published fine. I found on a site online that it is recommended to zip the PDF file. I did this and got no problems, published it and it worked with the zipped files.

To add to it all, I just tried again, linking the files to the PDF files directly and it worked perfectly! So, after all this there is no direct link as to what was the issue. I got lucky this time, but regardless, I will be saving more often from now on. Too bad, I couldn't figure out what the issue was.

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