[TriLUG] Web server Research question

[Joseph S. Tate]

"Content-disposition: attachment" is what you're looking for, but all that
does is tells the browser to save a file instead of opening it "inline". If
the user's browser preference is just to save to Downloads, that's all it
will do. There's no way to override the browser's behavior.

Instead instruct the user to right click the link and choose "save link as"
(as labeled in Chrome, variations required for other browsers).

But I think you have to think hard about WHY you want the user to choose
where to save the file. The web is better for having a known "Downloads"
folder. Instructions become so much simpler if you just say "download this
file, and open your downloads folder and double click the thing."

Joseph


On Mon, Jul 7, 2014 at 2:38 AM, Greg Woodbury <redwolfe at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 07/06/2014 11:33 PM, Brian McCullough wrote:
> > Good Morning, All.
> >
> >
> > I have a question that I have been trying to research lately, and not
> > having any success.
> >
> >
> > Has anybody ever encountered, or accomplished, a web server being able
> > to force a browser to ask where a file is to be saved.
> >
> > I always tell Firefox that I want to be asked, in its settings, but the
> > default is to just automatically save files "somewhere."  Some ( a lot
> > of ) people have no idea where that somewhere is, and so the file is
> > lost.
> >
> >
> > I want to force the user to choose where to put a file.
> >
> > Has anybody found any HTTP, or other, way to do this?
>
> All the browsers I am familiar with use a "Downloads" folder as the
> default location for storage.  They also have a "setting" for changing
> the default location (like Firefox has).  There is one browser I've
> encountered that default to the working directory it was invoked from
> (perhaps a webkit browser under LXDE?)
>
> I seem to recall reading somewhere that there may be a way to tell most
> browsers to invoke the file chooser when downloading, but I'd have to go
> re-read the specs at W3c
>
> --
> G.Wolfe Woodbury
> redwolfe at gmail.com
>
> --
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-- 
Joseph Tate