Internet Explorer will try and be smart when you link to a file and whether it tries to show the file inline or prompt you to download it deoends not just on the response headers you send but also on the content of the file itself as IE will sniff whats being sent back to see if it can recognise it.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/networking/moniker/overview/appendix_a.asp
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q260519/
You probably wont have to worry about all this too much as generally things will work they way you want them to, but it can be useful to know what IE is actually doing when you click the download link.
If I recall correctly, mozilla based browsers dont try to do anything overly tricky like this, .. but dont quote me on that. ;-)
Frank W. Zammetti wrote:
What he said :)
It comes down to the browser recognizing what the server sends back as the result of clicking a link or submitting a form. Normally, it recognizes it as an HTML page and displays it (overwriting what's already in the browser obviously).
In the case of downloading a file though, it can tell it's a file of some other type, and will either pass it along to a plug-in for display, or ask the user what to do with it.
Of course, I just repeated what Andrew said really :)
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