Dealing with Dial-up: Preview While Downloading
October 17, 2007Let’s say you are on a dial up connection and you are using Safari to download an mp3 file. Depending on the file size, it might take several minutes, or even hours. You can preview the file while it’s downloading to see if it’s actually what you are after.
In your Downloads folder (usually the Desktop) you will find an icon for the download in progress. If you Ctrl-Click (or Right-Click) on the icon and choose Show Package Contents from the context menu then a new folder window will open that shows the partial mp3 file and an info file. Don’t double click on the mp3 file as that might import it into iTunes; instead, Ctrl-Click (or Right-Click) on it and choose Open With… to launch it in QuickTime.
Now you can preview the file that you’re downloading. This doesn’t work with all media types; some need to be complete or QuickTime will show an error message.
Another little side-tip: If the status bar is showing in Safari when you see a cryptic button or link on a webpage (something along the lines of “View Now” or “Listen”), hovering your pointer over the button should show the associated file in the status bar. If it’s a QuickTime compatible file like an mp3, mp4, mov etc., you might want to drag that button or link to your download window to start downloading the actual file rather than simply clicking on it and having it play (or sit forever while buffering and then play in fits and starts; remember, we’re talking about dial-up users here).
