self-extracting .sea file for a mac won't download

I take a file, drop it into Stuffit and set an option of "make self-axtracting for Macintosh". It creates a .sea file. I published that file on a server, but when i type in the url and try to access the file, i get all those weird characters displayed in my browser, and the file itself is not being loaded onto my hard drive.
I have no idea what the problem can be. I did the same thing for PC and had no problems there (got a .exe file as a result of compression).
Anyone know how to make a self-extracting file for a MAC to download onto the user's machine???
Thanks

Putting a self-extracting Stuffit file on the a server unencoded is not a good idea. It just won't work.

The Mac OS uses a filesystem called HFS. This filesystem stores files as two "forks," a "data" fork and a "resource" fork. (The HFS+ filesystem on newer Macs actually supports more than two forks, but this capability is not used by the OS.)

This dual-fork nature of the files stored and created on Macs has some advantages. Application data - the actual program, is stored in the data fork, while UI and icons are stored in the resource fork, thus keeping the program with it's resources, for instance.

It also has disadvantages. When a file with a resource fork is moved from a HFS filesystem to a filesystem that doesn't do forks, like ext2 on Linux, the resource fork is stripped out of the file. In the case of an application (like a self-extracting Stuffit file) this causes the application not to work anymore.

The way around this problem is to encode the file. This encodes the resource fork and places it into the data fork, thus making it safe to transfer the file. The two most common types of encoding are MacBinary and BinHex. Most Mac internet apps know how to decode both of these, Internet Explorer being the most important in this case.

If you have Stuffit Deluxe, you can use it to do either of these encodings, or if you are using DropStuff, there is an option in the preferences to "Encode archive into BinHex format."

Encode your file and all should be well.

ZeUs,
thank you so very much for taking the time and giving me such a detailed explanation on the subject. I have never worked with MACs until I started my current job, so I do not know much about them at all.
"Encode archive into BinHex format" worked like a charm.
Thanks again.