If you link to something downloadable with a simple <a href, the user will download the file while staying on the current page. You can get this behavior with files that the browser has no plugin for (like .bin), or by sending a content-disposition header to force downloading.
Is there any method or header which keeps the user on the current page while still requesting the page? The idea is that the user clicks a link, the request is made, but the page doesn’t change—like when downloading a file.
This could be done with an iframe I guess, which is not really pretty and makes another request when loading the page. Javascript is another obvious answer, but that’s actually the reason for asking this question: compatibility with JS-less clients.
A form with the method set to HEAD is another ugly solution, but doesn’t work anyway. Chromium ignores the method and simply performs a GET request…
Anymore ideas?
You could place an iframe on your page that is hidden. Then, give that iframe and id.
Use this id as the target of a link to the file you want to pull down.
I’ve created a demo at http://jsfiddle.net/dancrumb/N87nL/ to show you how this would work. Just style the iframe as being invisible and you’re good to go
The page will load in the iframe, you’ll stay on your page, it doesn’t require JS. Oh boy!
Note that the iFrame doesn’t have an initial value for
src, so no request is made on page load.