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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-07T00:35:33+00:00

What actions does the IE take when we right click the following URL and

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What actions does the IE take when we right click the following URL and choose “Save as”?

http://www.somesite.com/some_file.zip

I heard of something like “HTTP Download”, what exactly is it?

My understanding is, HTTP is a text based protocol, how could it be used to transfer different kinds of files?

My guess is, when we choose Save as for a URL, IE (or any other browser) will open a new TCP connection to the server and do the file transfer. It should have nothing to do with HTTP.

  • When we visit a web page, browser use TCP connection to transfer HTTP
    info and HTMLs.
  • When we download file in IE, browser use TCP to transfer file content.

It’s essentially the same, only differnt in what’s being transfered.

Am I right?
connection to tranfer file content.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    You could transfer any binary data over HTTP. For example the server could set the Content-Type response header to anything and then write any data to the response. So for example you could set the Content-Type to application/octet-stream and then write binary data to the response. So what IE does is that it analyzes the Content-Type response header, downloads the contents and if it is a known content type that it can display (such as HTML for example) it displays it inline, if not, it prompts the user to save it.

    HTTP is not a text based protocol. The headers should be text but the body of the request/response could be arbitrary bytes. That’s what the headers are used for: to indicate exactly how is the body encoded so that the other party could understand and decode it appropriately.

    As far as TCP and HTTP are concerned, HTTP is a protocol on the top of TCP. So when using HTTP you are implicitly using TCP. Think of it as a convention based protocol over the main transmition mechanism which is TCP. TCP is low level: it is what allows the connection between the client and the server. HTTP is like a language. Without HTTP, TCP is like two people from different countries, each speaking a different language, meeting in a bar. What do you think will happen? They won’t be able to exchange a word. HTTP is the common language that unites them and allows them to talk. TCP is just the bar.

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