Download
Force Files to Download
Note: Not sure I understand this, and not tested properly…
Force Files to Download Instead of Opening
Have ever wished that you could force a file to download instead of opening
in a browser? Some common files like MP3
and PDF
files will open in
your reader’s browser if the proper parent plugin is installed. Sometimes you
want to force them to download the file without having to right-click and save
it.
This action can be achieved very easily in Apache by modifying the
.htaccess
file. You can set it at your domain root to affect your entire
site, or you can set it in subdirectories to only affect parts of your site.
All you need to know is your file extension(s). Then add an octet-stream
mime type for each. So you might add the following to your .htaccess
file:
AddType application/octet-stream .avi
AddType application/octet-stream .mpg
AddType application/octet-stream .mov
AddType application/octet-stream .pdf
The above example would force a download message and prevent any AVI
,
MPG
, MOV
, or PDF
file from opening in a browser.