12-11-2006, 12:11 PM

Hi all,

I'm working on a website that needs to have a person's info and then a link to their vcard. Unfortunately I don't have any experience with said vcards so I'm somewhat in the dark, and as yet my web searches haven't turned up much useful info. Is a vcard just a regular file that can be linked like any old download, or is there some special process to getting it "obtainable" on a website?

Thanks,
m19

12-12-2006, 08:12 AM

A vCard is basically a text file with a contact's details in it - any decent mail client will let you save a contact as vcard. I'm on Windows at the moment so can't have a go on mail but on Outlook you go to the Contact tab, select the contact, do File > Save As..., choose vCard File from the dropdown and save it.

If you open a vCard in a text editor you'll see something like:

BEGIN:VCARD
VERSION:2.1
N:Smith;John
FN:John Smith
EMAILREF;INTERNET:john.smith@domain.com
REV:20061212T130854Z
END:VCARD

Once you have your vCard you can just link to it as you would any other file. If thay have a Mail client setup that accepts vCards it will automaitcally import the contact. Otherwise they'll asked what application to open the vCard in.

Hope that helps.

12-12-2006, 08:34 AM

Very helpful yes, thank you!

m19

12-12-2006, 10:51 AM

Hmm... I've got the vcard set up as a download and when clicked, Firefox and IE both pop up the "new contact" window. But, all the fields are blank instead of filled in. I've tried it with two vcards and get the same problem each time. I know the vcards have worked for other people, and I've tried this on two computers here and get the same problem.

m19

12-12-2006, 05:29 PM

Alright, now I've got the vcards set up properly: when a user downloads one and opens it, it opens the mail contact as it should. However, clicking the link (rather than doing a Save As) just displays the vcard as tetx onscreen instead of going to the mail client. Any ideas why it's doing this?

What's goofy is I can go here:

http://www.fontstuff.com/mailbag/qfrontpage02.htm

...qand the example vcard link works fine. Clicking on it opens up a new contact with all the info filled in. But if I download that file and then upload it to my web server, making no changes to it all, when I click MY link, it just displays the code. So the exact same file is fine downloading from one server, but doesn't work properly on the other. Why is that?

m19

12-13-2006, 04:13 PM

Originally Posted by Morgan19

Alright, now I've got the vcards set up properly: when a user downloads one and opens it, it opens the mail contact as it should. However, clicking the link (rather than doing a Save As) just displays the vcard as tetx onscreen instead of going to the mail client. Any ideas why it's doing this?

What's goofy is I can go here:

http://www.fontstuff.com/mailbag/qfrontpage02.htm

...qand the example vcard link works fine. Clicking on it opens up a new contact with all the info filled in. But if I download that file and then upload it to my web server, making no changes to it all, when I click MY link, it just displays the code. So the exact same file is fine downloading from one server, but doesn't work properly on the other. Why is that?

Anyone?

m19