Skype Buttons and Mail - tips and tricks
By
Lenn Pryor on May 15, 2006 in .
The response to my last post on using the new presence enabled Skype buttons has generated a great response and I have gotten a ton of email and comments. I wanted to respond here so that as many people as possible can benefit. Most of the feedback relates to two issues:
1.) I Can't get it to work ...
- Make sure you insert the code snippet Skype provides you in one of the empty div tags generated to provide spacing. If paste it into a random spot you could cause an error that will not render the page properly. Test it in the browser and make sure that it looks the way you want the signature to look.
- When you are saving the file out as an HTML file from your editor, make sure you don't overwrite the existing Webarchive file, save it to another location and rename it. Don't forget to then open it in Safari and use the "Save as" command to save it as a Web archive with the name of the original in the signatures folder.
- You must have your "Composing" Preferences set to "Rich Text" for Message Format for the status image to display.
- You must have your "Viewing" Preferences set to "Display remote images in HTML messages" to load the image.
2.) Status doesn't change in email, always says you are online even if you are not.
- Mail.app does not reload the image once it has loaded it. Unfortunately status will not refresh automatically for an image in an email in Mail.app once it has loaded a remote image. It appears to be stored in a cache.
Keep them coming ...
Comments
All ok for RTF in comostion and...show images to see the image, I forgot it. It works perfectly, thank you.
dr.maxx | Monday, May 15
Are you guys 100% sure you are setting every possible cache-defeating HTTP header when you serve up the image? Teaching you to suck eggs here I'm sure, and I don't know Mail.app's behaviour... but if you set the Pragma, Cache-Control and maybe even Expires headers maybe you can get round this problem - if Mail checks any of these.
Failing that... if Mail does not cache resources retrieved using XMLHttpRequest, then you could get dirty an make the HTML generator create a AJAX-style snippet to get the image
wangjammer5 | Monday, May 15
I have just downloaded the new version of Skype for Mac OSX and have been unable to get the free SkypeOut to function. I get the error: failed no SkypeOut. Is there something else that I need to do. The instructions seemed to suggest that it happens automatically. That is, that calls within the US/Canada can automatically be made (as long as you dial the country code 011) without further actions. Is this the case
felyles | Tuesday, May 16
Hey i open det webarchive file in BBedit and saved it as html. maid no changes, result:
bplist00Ñ_WebMainResourceÔ _WebResourceTextEncodingName_WebResourceData^WebResourceURL_WebResourceMIMETypeUUTF-8Of
Henrik Nørgaard
Mobil +45 51848130
Udata:Ytext/html &DVe{ëñ û
henrikgh | Thursday, May 25
You don't need BBEdit. Just save the snip & Change the name to the signiture one. Then open the file with Safari and save it as a WebArcive. After that you just have to copy & Paste the file to your signiture folder and replace the old file with the new one.
Good Luck
mosby1996 | Tuesday, Jun 27
I am using Microsoft Entourage (latest version) and would like to add this functionality. How? Thanks
genemobley | Thursday, Jun 29
it works for me. unfortunately the cache thing does seem to defeat the purpose of what we are trying to do here - both in mail and browsers. i presume the users cache will always show the old image as well. i think some image replacement code is neccessary if it's possible.
Skype,
what your doing is great. There are some really rude people on here that think they be demanding just cause they may have kicked in ten euros or so. chill out everyone, it's all coming, in the mean time show some respect for the huge amount of work skype has already done, and keep your requests polite.
I'm still gettin over the fact that i can text chat with a stranger in a country i've never heard of! it's amazing.
thanku skype.
moovin.com | Tuesday, Jul 25
Hello
maybe I missed it but how does it work with Entourage?
callschulmannwithskype | Friday, Jun 22