Re: viewable vs downloadble attachment links

I'd like to reiterate that even though this isn't an HTML issue, it is an
issue a webmaster has to be familiar with... putting the .doc file into a
.zip file, and linking to that .zip file, will have the browser ALWAYS
download the file (actually, pull up a dialogue asking if you want to save
it or open it from the 'net like most browsers do for all 'normal' downloads
these days,) and not only that, but you COULD get a dramatically smaller
file size, resulting in less download time (but that one's no guarantee.)
Zip files would be the best way to go. The most popular windows program for
zip files is winzip, in case you don't have anything for that file type.
[Inanis]
----- Original Message -----
From: Ian Hickson <py8ieh@bath.ac.uk>
To: <ptorr@vantsys.com.au>
Cc: Ravindra Sharma <rsharma@marketfirst.com>; <www-html@w3.org>
Sent: Monday, January 11, 1999 2:38 PM
Subject: Re: viewable vs downloadble attachment links


|On Tue, 12 Jan 1999 ptorr@vantsys.com.au wrote:
|> The browser works with "registered file types" to determine that
|> ".DOC" files can be run with Microsoft Word.
|
|"The browser" is therefore broken. (Yes, IE is buggy in this regard).
|
|What should happen is that the web browser should use the server's
|mime type information to discover the type of the document.
|
|
|> If you rename them to something like ".D_C" (or have no extension at
|> all) then the browser will not find a matching file type and will
|> ask the user to save the file to disk.
|
|Only because the server will then be sending incorrect mime type
|information.
|
|--
|Ian Hickson
|
|

Received on Monday, 11 January 1999 17:56:38 UTC