Since he was using an earthlink email address and was only sharing among friends I suggested the easiest approach - "Simply download the file to disk" and I have yet had any problems with users downloading the .sit or .zip or .gzip or .hqx files.
I tried uploading an .htaccess file to comcast/ISP and was unsuccessful in setting it up. I was trying to put some password protection on my site. I'm fairly new to apache but comcast is difficult to deal with. I'm sure if I was running my own server it would be a logical and easy fix but dealing with outside ISP servers is a real pain sometimes.
Thanks
Tom
On Jan 15, 2004, at 11:55 PM, Alex Rice wrote:
On Jan 15, 2004, at 7:48 PM, Thomas J McGrath III wrote:
It is much simpler of a problem to fix.
Just have the user hold the control key and choose 'download link to disk' in OSX. I think you can hold the option/alt key down while clicking with the mouse and go right to the download.
Maybe special keystrokes to do a download is fine for Andrew's needs - a game shared among friends, but in a hi-profile situation it won't be adequate.
Also switching to a particular file type, say .sit or .hqx, hoping that is will known by the web browser is also problematic. It's a gamble. What if they have an old or misconfigured browser? What if you think it should be known by the browser but it really is not? What if the user deleted their MIME type settings or helper application settings? So it's just a partial solution.
The other simple solution is to convert the file from a .rev file which acts more like a text file(which loads in a browser window), to a .sit or .hqx etc. file which will then 'auto' download when clicked because that is browser expected behavior for those formats.
I used to work for a ISP/web hosting provider so bear with me. I'm not sure you understand the cause of the problem. If you do, then I apologize for the noise.
You can try any file type, binary or text, and if the web server MIME type config doesn't map the file extension, and the web browser doesn't have that file extension in it's MIME types and/or helper applications preferences, then guess what happens: the browser tries to display it as text, even if it's binary.
That's what the application/octet-stream MIME type is for- it says to the web browser "hey if you don't have a preference what to do with this file, here is the MIME type to use" and the the web browser goes "Oh! application/octet-stream- I'm supposed to download that and save it to disk"
The correct solution with Apache server is as simple as uploading a .htaccess file into your web directory (for most ISPs). That's a pretty simple solution, considering you do it once and the problem goes away forever.
Hope this helps,
Alex Rice <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | Mindlube Software | <http://mindlube.com>
what a waste of thumbs that are opposable to make machines that are disposable -Ani DiFranco
_______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
Macintosh PowerBook G-4 OSX 10.3.1, OS 9.2.2, 1.25 GHz, 512MB RAM, Rev 2.1.2
Advanced Media Group Thomas J McGrath III • 2003 • [EMAIL PROTECTED] 220 Drake Road, Bethel Park, PA 15102
_______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
