How to force a download dialog box?

[gsoujanya]

Hi,
I have a problem with downloading the file.
I provide a list of all the files uploaded to a particular item in my web page. All my uploaded files are stored in a directory on the web server. When the user clicks on one of those links, I need to let him download it. It shouldn't display the contents of the uploaded file.

Setting Response.ContentType doesn't seem to work.

How can this be done?

Thanks,
Soujanya

[monte96]

Unfortunately, you don't have alot of control over this one. For instance, if you click on a PDF file and want it to download, it doesn't (well it sort of does).. it displays in the browser and Acrobat loads in the background as an ActiveX Server. The filetype is what determines how the browser will handle the file and that depends on how each user has it set up to handle different file types. Using my example above, if I didn't have Acrobat installed, the file would prompt me to download it.

[JoshT]

In theory, shouldn't the browser handle the downloaded file based on the MIME type, rather than the file extension? IE seems to sometimes act based on the file extension when it would make more sense to act depending on the MIME type.

[sail3005]

I guess the best thing you can do is just .zip everything. Or, you could make everything with your own extenxion, like .dload or somehting, and then just have the users remove the .dload.

like file1.pdf.dload --> file1.pdf