Module 8 · Level 3 · 10 min
Export: image, PDF, Markdown — and the file that carries the app
Four ordinary exports, and one that surprises everybody: a single file that opens your map on someone else's computer with nothing installed.
Start with the one nobody knows
You can send a map as one .html file. The person who receives it
double-clicks it and the map opens — no account, no install, no licence, no internet.
The reader travels inside the file.
It is the right answer whenever a link is wrong: an attachment for a client who will archive it, a deliverable that must still open in three years, a machine with no network. And unlike a published link, it never expires, because it does not live on anyone's server.
The ordinary four
| Format | Use it for |
|---|---|
| PNG | Slides, documents, a message. The picture of the map as it looks now. |
| Printing, and anything that must look identical everywhere. | |
| Markdown | Turning the map back into text — a document, a brief, a commit message. |
| CSV | The board or the table in Excel. |
For social networks, there is a purpose-built one
It composes the post rather than screenshotting your screen: the map framed properly, at the right dimensions, with your name on it if you choose. There is a carousel version too — one image per slide, plus a cover — which turns a map into a post series without opening a design tool.
Which one, in one line
| The other person will… | Send |
|---|---|
| Read it once, on their phone | A published link |
| Keep it, archive it, open it in three years | The .html file |
| Put it in a slide or a report | PNG |
| Print it or sign off on it | |
| Work on the numbers | CSV |
| Edit the map themselves | The .tabtree file |
Your turn
Send the same map twice to yourself: once as a published link, once as the
.html file. Open both on your phone.
Feeling the difference is what makes you pick the right one under pressure — which is always the moment you have to choose.