FTP Pages and Download Dialog Boxes

  • Thread starter Thread starter Nathan Sokalski
  • Start date Start date
N

Nathan Sokalski

I have recently set up the FTP service that is part of the version of IIS
that comes with Windows XP Pro. Everything works well, but there is one
thing I have noticed that I would like to change. When the visitor comes to
the URL of a file that is of a type recognized by Internet Explorer (such as
..bmp, .html, .gif, etc.), it is displayed in IE. When it is a file type not
recognized by IE, the download dialog box is brought up. Because the only
reason I bothered to install the FTP service on my computer was so visitors
could easily download certain files by clicking a link. If IE displays the
file, I may as well have just left it as a web page. How can I (assuming
there is a way, I'm not sure if it is caused by IE or some setting in IIS)
force the download dialog to come up regardless of the file type? Thank You.
 
That might cause the dialog to always come up, but it does not solve my
problem, because then the user is not really downloading the same file. I
want the dialog to come up for ANY file type. In case you don't remember, my
purpose in this is to make it as easy as possible for the user to obtain the
desired file with as few steps as possible. Whenever I obtain a file from a
website, I get somewhat annoyed that I have to go through the process of
unzipping it (when a file or group of files is large, I see reason to make a
zip file, but my files are not very big, and with the number of people that
now have high-speed connections, I feel zip files should be the decision of
the site designer). Any ideas that do NOT involve changing the file(s) that
will be downloaded? Thanks.
 
if your sharing docs and stuff similar to that, you could use WORDPADs RTF
(richTextFormat) so if you save the doc in the default FTProot folder your
users will click the "mydoc.rtf" and they will be prompted for download,
otherwise if the file is not a download i dont think its possible to do so
it will be cached by the users browser. (imagin visiting msn.com and beign
propted for each image and background. *.bmp and all are not executable,

if your still watching this thread goodluck to ya.

signed;
modelingfrog
 
That brings me back to the same problem:

I do not want to change the file to download!

And just to clear up a misunderstanding you seem to have about how my
website is structured, I am not putting my entire site up as an FTPsite,
only the files that will be available for download will be under the FTProot
directory. Therefore, I can make a link to the FTP section of my site that
says something like "Download Outliner.class" or "Download Navigation.asp"
or "Download SeniorPic.jpeg", but any graphics that are part of my website
(the part I DO want the browser to display) would be in the WWWroot, so a
download dialog never comes up.
 
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