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Re: Right Click to Download?

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From: jukka.korpela
Date: Feb 15, 2002 12:37AM


Michael Marcial wrote:

> How does one use the keyboard to right-click and download a file?

It depends on the user agent. On my Internet Explorer, for example, I could
use Shift F10 followed by d. Your mileage most probably varies, since such
assignments depend on IE's user interface language. And on Opera 6, for
example, it's Control Shift S.

The point is that any user agent on which "downloading" (i.e., saving onto
local disk) makes sense at all - you can't "download" things if you haven't
got a writeable disk or equivalent, can you? - has some relatively simple
tools for it. And the user can be expected to know them, or to learn them
from some local documentation and support.

This topic is discussed in the "Other Media" section of WDG's Web Authoring
FAQ:
http://www.htmlhelp.com/faq/html/media.html

For accessibility, it would be advisable to make it clear _before_ the link
that it points to a PDF document (or other non-HTML document, as the case
may be). It would be fairly frustrating to follow a link, find oneself in
great trouble with it, and, after returning to the linking document, hear
that it is a link to a PDF file. Besides (now I'm looking into a virtual
mirror) some of us are hasty enough to follow links without looking at
explanations after them - and PDF files often cause problems in "usual"
browsing too.

There's a particular myth, or cargo cult, to be avoided here: the myth of
zipping. Contrary to widespread claims to the opposite, "zipping it" does
not force a download.
In fact, it makes (direct) download of e.g. a PDF document impossible.
Zipping has its uses, but zipping just to "force download" is harmful. In
particular, many users have no software for opening zipped packages, and
especially people with disabilities may have great difficulties in finding
such software, installing it, and learning to use it.

> What other options are there to allow someone to download a file
> and NOT open it in a browser, PDFs for example.

Who knows? Some user agent might obey verbal commands (just wishful
thinking at present, I'm afraid), or ask the user what to do, or do a
download whenever a link is followed in any way; that would be fairly
natural if the browser does not know of any software that can handle PDF,
for example.

--
Jukka K. Korpela, erityisasiantuntija / senior adviser
TIEKE Tietoyhteiskunnan kehitt