InformIT: Mac OS X Unleashed

Table of Contents

Address Book

The Address Book application is a network-based directory search system and contact information manager. Using the LDAP protocol (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) and vCard 2.1 Personal Data Interchange format, it is based entirely on open standards and can be used in a cross-platform environment.

vCards

The most common way to send contact information with an e-mail is by adding a signature. Unfortunately, there is no standard for signatures, so picking up contact information from one is an exercise in futility. The vCard (.vcf) format attempts to change this by defining a simple cross-platform MIME standard for an electronic business card. vCards can be used on PDAs such as the Palm Pilot, and then copied to your system and used directly within the Address Book application.

Mac OS X uses version 2.1 of the vCard standard, developed by the Internet Mail Consortium and documented in RFC2426 (http://www.imc.org/rfc2426). A sample vCard, generated by Michael Heydasch's vCard CGI (http://www.vicintl.com/vcf/) is shown here.

BEGIN:VCARD
   FN:Mr. John P. Smith, Jr.
   TITLE:General Manager
   ORG:XYZ Corp.;North American Division;Manufacturing
   ADR;POSTAL;WORK:;;P.O. Box 10010;AnyCity;AnyState;00000;U.S.A.
   LABEL;POSTAL;WORK;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:P.O. Box 10010=0D=0A=
    Anywhere, TN  37849=0D=0A=
    U.S.A.
   ADR;PARCEL;WORK:;133 Anywhere St.;Suite 360;AnyCity;AnyState;00000;U.S.A.
   LABEL;POSTAL;WORK;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:133 Anywhere St.=0D=0A=
    Anywhere, TN  37849=0D=0A=
    U.S.A.
   TEL;Work;VOICE;MESG;PREF:+1-234-456-7891 x56473
   TEL;Home:+1-234-456-7891
   TEL;Pager:+1-234-456-7891
   TEL;Cell:+1-234-456-7891
   TEL;Modem;FAX:+1-234-456-7891,,*3
   EMAIL;Internet:webmaster@anywhere.com
   URL:http://www.anywhere.com/mrh.vcf
   UID:http://www.anywhere.com/mrh.vcf
   TZ:-0500
   BDAY:1997-11-29
   REV:20010510T104344
   VERSION:2.1
END:VCARD

The vCard defines a person object based on X.520 and X.521 directory services standards—implemented on a large scale in enterprise directory systems. Even encoded images can be included in vCards!

After a vCard is generated, it can be attached to e-mail messages for easy importing into remote address books. In the case of Mac OS X, you can simply drag the vCard from a message window into the Address Book, and it will be added to your contact list.

LDAP

The Lightweight Directory Access Protocol defines a means of querying remote directory systems. LDAP servers are typically used to hold personnel account data, but can be used to serve any hierarchy of data. Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X computers all have the ability to poll LDAP servers for account information, such as login and password.

The Address Book makes use of LDAP server connectivity to retrieve contact information from the network. There are three public LDAP servers already included in the application—Bigfoot (http://www.bigfoot.com), Four11 (http://people.yahoo.com), and WhoWhere (http://www.whowhere.com).

These public servers collect user information from the Internet (news postings and so on) and make it available in a searchable LDAP directory. In addition, you can add your own LDAP server to the mix as long as you know the name or IP address of the server, and the search base.

The search base defines a starting point in the LDAP hierarchy to begin looking for information. Companies might have their LDAP directories built based on a per-department schema or other arrangement. Unless you are the LDAP administrator, it is impossible to guess the appropriate search base. Your best bet is not to use a search base, or to contact your network administrator for the correct value. Bases are specified in the format:

<key name>=<base string>

For example, the search base for many users of Bigfoot's LDAP server is c=US. This simply limits the search to the United States hierarchy.

Using Address Book

Address Book is, unlike Mail, a small application. The main Window, seen in Figure 7.17, provides access to all the main features from a single location.

Figure 7.17 Address Book keeps track of your contact information with a simple uncluttered interface.

The toolbar, like Mail, contains the common application actions, such as creating new contacts or searching the contact database.

Directly below the toolbar are the Show menu and Search field. These limit the addresses that are shown in the contact listing. Typing into the Search field will display only those contact items that contain the typed string. The Show pop-up menu chooses a category of contacts to display. By default, there are seven categories (All, Buddy, Home, Favorite, Temporary, Work, Groups), three of which are special:

All— All contacts in the Address book.
Groups— Only contact groups are shown, not individuals.
Temporary Cards— When sending or replying to a message, a temporary card is created. You can reassign a temporary card to a permanent category by editing the card. This is a very easy way to populate your Address Book.

New categories can be created when editing contacts or groups of contacts. There is currently no way to add a category directly.

Contacts are listed in the center of the window. Each head icon represents an individual. Dragging that icon to another application will paste the e-mail address into the drag location (such as the Mail application's To: field). Dragging the icon to the Finder will save an exported vCard (.vcf) to your drive. Double-clicking a line in the listing edits the contact data.

In addition to individual contacts, you can create groups of contacts, which are represented by a two-headed icon. Groups can be used to send e-mail to a common collection of people, such as friends and family. The simplest way to create a group is to select multiple people in the contact list, and then choose the New Group From Selection from the File menu.

Finally, you (the owner of the Address Book) can designate a listed contact to be "you". A single head icon with a blue background highlights this contact. Set the owner contact by highlighting an entry in the list and choosing This is me from the Edit menu.

At the bottom of the Address Book window is a styled view of the selected contact's business card. This is provided as a way to quickly preview the contact's vCard.

Adding and Editing Contacts and Categories

To add a contact to the Address Book, click the New toolbar icon or choose New (Command+N) from the File menu.

The Contact creation screen is shown (in expanded mode) in Figure 7.18.

Figure 7.18 Enter as much (or as little) information for the contact as you'd like, including pictures.

You can add as much or as little information as you'd like within the contact window. An e-mail address is required if you plan to use the contact with Mail. By default, only a small amount of information (name, e-mail, and phone number) is collected when creating a contact. To enter more data, click the disclosure push button on the right side of the window.

This will open an expanded version of the contact entry form. The fields down the right side of the window are variable—you can choose from one of nine different types of information. In the event that there are additional data fields to store, the pop-up menus at the bottom of the window can be set to customized field names by choosing Edit from the menu.

In the upper-right corner of the contact edit screen is an image well. To add a picture to the contact, drag an image file from the Finder into the image well.

Finally, each contact can be part of a category. To assign a category, click the Categories button in the lower-left corner of the window. A category sheet, similar to that in Figure 7.19, will appear.

Figure 7.19 Use the category sheet to add or remove categories and assign the current object to one or more categories.

Click the check box in front of the category name to add the contact being edited to that category. You can add one item to multiple categories by checking multiple boxes.

To add a new category to the list, click the + button; then enter a name for the new category. To remove an existing category, highlight its name in the listing, and then click the - button. Click OK to exit the category editor.

When finished editing the contact information, click Save to save the contact within your Address Book.

Adding/Editing Groups

Groups provide a means of addressing multiple related people simultaneously. To create an Address Book group, choose New Group (Shift+Command+N) from the File menu. To jump-start the process, select one or more contacts to add to the group, and then choose New Group From Selection to create a new group containing the selected contacts.

Regardless of the approach you take to creating the group, the group setup window should appear, as shown in Figure 7.20.

Figure 7.20 Groups can hold multiple contacts.

Create a name and a description for your group by filling in the corresponding fields. These will be displayed in the main listing. Click the Categories button to file the group under one of the existing categories or add a new category to Address Book (see the previous section for details).

To add a contact to the group, type or paste an e-mail address or contact into the Add Address: field. Click the "+" button to add it. If the contact already exists in the Address Book or within a Directory Search window, you can add it by dragging its card icon (little head-shaped thing) into the group list. You can remove entries by highlighting them in the list, and then clicking the - button.

Click Save to save the group information.

Customizing the Toolbar

The Address Book's toolbar can be customized for easy access to these functions by choosing Customize Toolbar from the View menu, or by Option+Command-clicking the toolbar button. The available shortcuts are displayed in Figure 7.21.

Figure 7.21 Even Address Book's toolbar can be customized.

From the top left to bottom right, the available shortcuts are

New — Add a new contact to the address book.
New Group— Create a new (empty) group.
Edit— Edit the selected contact's information.
Delete— Delete the selected contact's data.
Send Email— Send an e-mail to the selected person or group.
Card— Toggle a graphical display of the vCard for the selected contact.
Directory — Search an LDAP server.
Separator— Add a separator bar to the Address Book toolbar.
Default Set— Restore the default set of toolbar shortcuts.
Show— Choose the toolbar style (text, icon and text, or icon only). You can cycle through these options by Command+clicking the toolbar button.

Searching for Contacts

To query LDAP servers for contact information, click the Directory toolbar icon, choose LDAP Directory Search from the Window menu, or Search Directory from the View menu. Figure 7.22 shows the LDAP search window.

Figure 7.22 Search for friends and associates using the built-in LDAP capabilities of Address Book.

To search, fill in as many (or as few) fields as you'd like. The more search criteria you give, the greater the chance that the LDAP server will locate a specific person. Searching for a last name of Smith, for example, is likely to return thousands of results. Searching for Smith with the location of Bringleburger will generate a much narrower result set.

To start the search, press Enter from within any of the search criteria fields. After a few seconds, the results will be shown. The name of each queried LDAP server starts the listing generated from that machine. You can collapse a server's result list by clicking the disclosure arrow in front of its name.

If you find the contact you are looking for, you can add it to the address book by dragging the contact (using the card icon in front of the list item) to the Address Book window. It will be added to whatever category is currently selected in the Show pop-up. After the contact is in the address book, it acts like any other address book entry.

Preferences

Address Book's Preference panel is used to set the available LDAP servers. There are no other application-wide preferences.

The Preferences panel can be seen in Figure 7.23.

Figure 7.23 Add new LDAP servers by opening Address Book Preferences panel.

Each field in the panel is editable by double-clicking the text in the field. The Use field determines which servers are used in a query. To disable a server, click in the Use field to toggle the check mark on and off. Checked servers are queried; unchecked servers are skipped.

To add a new server, click the Add Server button. Similarly, to remove an existing LDAP server, select it in the list, and then click Remove Server.

Menus

The File, Edit, and View menus don't hold any surprises. They have the same options we've already looked at, with the addition of the Import and Save To features to the File menu.

File

The File menu is used to create new contacts and groups, as well as search the existing directory. Of the available options, one of the more useful is the ability to import VCF data, which makes it easy to enter contact data from other systems.

New (Command+N)— Create a new contact.
New Group (Shift+Command+N)— Create a new group of contacts.
New Group From Selection— Use the highlighted contacts to seed a new group.
Open (Command+O)— Open a contact file (.vcf) for editing.
Import (Command+I)— Import data from an existing .vcf file.
Close (Command+W)— Close the frontmost window.
Save (Command+S)— Save the address book.
Save To— When editing contact information, this selection will save the contact to a .vcf file.
Revert— Revert information to its last saved form.

Edit

Using the options in the Edit menu, you can choose who you are, as well as start a new message to your chosen contact:

Edit (Command+E)— Edit the selected contact card.
Add To Favorites (Command+F)— Add the contact to the Favorites category, allowing it to be accessed from Mail's Favorites tray.
This is Me— Designate the selected contact as the Address Book owner (you).
Compose Mail (Shift+Command+M)— Send a new e-mail message to the selected contacts.

View

Use the View menu to modify the columns that can be seen in the main Address Book list. Use the Available Fields option to toggle columns on or off within the view. Choose Search Directory to open the LDAP search options. Finally, the Show Card (Command+T) option will toggle the display of a graphical representation of a person's vCard.

Address Book is a great companion to Mail. Using LDAP and .vcf files, you can easily search directory listings no matter where they are located. The Windows 2000 Active Directory system even offers LDAP support, making integration into the Windows world a reality.

So far, both Mail and Address Book have supported LDAP searches. If you think we're done, guess again. The Sherlock search tool also supports LDAP searches, but can extend its reach far beyond directory servers to anywhere on the World Wide Web.

Sherlock | Next Section

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