Download pop-up

Question

Hi,
I'm creating a servlet and creating an html page within it. In the html page, i'm providing a link to a pdf file. Currently, the pdf file opens on the user's browser window, where he/she can save it. I wish to implement it in a way that when the user clicks on the link, it shows a pop-up with 3 options: Open, Save or Cancel, as shown when we download files from the internet. Can anyone help me how to do this?

Answer 1

You'd probably want to do something like that with a combination of HTML (the target attribute to the A tag) and Javascript. I suppose it might require (if you couldn't do it all in javascript) creating an additional servlet that would contain HTTP headers to instruct the browser to save the file rather than display it, but I'd suggest avoiding that if you can and keep the solution isolated in as few languages as possible (i.e., don't use servlets if you can do it all in javascript).
Though I guess you could do it all in HTML and servlets. Use the target attribute to cause a new window to open. That new window would hold a simple web page with three buttons (either form buttons or 3 links over graphics that look like buttons). One button would be a plain link to the PDF. One button would just hold javascript to close the window (cancel) although actually I'd suggest just skipping this button and let the user just close the window themselves if they want to cancel. Then one button would link to the servlet that would cause a download rather than a display.
But you know what's better still? Just provide a single link to the PDF from your original page. If the user wants to download the file, they probably know how by right-clicking the link. You can add instructions about how to do that if you think they really don't know. My general rule of thumb: the more complicated the navigation, the worse the interface. Let the browser's existing functionality do its job.