Aims
I’m trying to let users download a file (myfile.zip in this case) by clicking a button on the page, without them leaving the page – ie the browser must stay on the current page, and leave them in a position where they can continue to use the page, including clicking the button again (should they wish to get a new copy of the file).
I need this to work across all browsers (IE6-8, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari).
Background
Packaged inside the zip is a selection of stuff based on their other interactions (some of which may be partially complete) from the same page (this is all done via ajax) and I don’t want them to leave the page as they would lose any unsaved changes.
To avoid leaving the page (if you do this the page tries to close itself first, so that it’s sure that you’ve saved everything, and you get warning messages if you haven’t) or leaving blank tabs (which I don’t like, nor the use of the depreciated target attribute) I’ve used an iframe, whose src attribute is changed in javascript.
This works everywhere except some versions of Opera, which I have considered an acceptable loss (I might fix that via the use of one of the other solutions plus browser detection later).