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Save Downloadables to Desktop

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22 Mar 2011, 5:39 PM
#1
ampm11 avatar

ampm11

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Save Downloadables to Desktop

Hello Friends,

I sell a lot of mp3 downloads through my website (https://www.abigailmiller.com). When customers click the "Download Now" button after they have provided their payment information, they are not being giving the option to download the song to their computer, but rather, their browser opens the file and plays it automatically. I want them to click the button and allow them to save the files to their computers versus having it play automatically in their browsers. Is this something I can fix in HTML?

Note: if they right click on the "Download Now" button, they can save the file to their computer, but that's not the ideal way to get their downloads. They should be able to click the button and save the files.

Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

Paul

22 Mar 2011, 6:18 PM
#2
kuroi avatar

kuroi

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Re: Save Downloadables to Desktop

The reason that the mp3 plays is because you have the mp3 file extension associated with an application on your machine, and operating systems helpfully pick that up and use it. Visitors who don't have an app associated with the mp3 extension will find that the file is downloaded.

This is significant because it points to a solution ... though alas one of those that requires a fairly high level of technical knowledge. Basically you have to fool the visitors browser into thinking that the file is something other than an mp3.

This can be done by sending an HTML header ahead of the request that says that the file is, say, a plain text file. However, this would have the drawback that you'd have to serve the files off the same server as your site, i.e. you couldn't use a cloudfront to spread the the traffic and take the load off your webserver.

22 Mar 2011, 11:16 PM
#3
misty avatar

misty

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Re: Save Downloadables to Desktop

Put the mp3 file/s into zip format...problem solved