Entry

How to force the browser to open the link (to a doc or excel file) with the external application

Apr 4th, 2004 06:19
Geir Pedersen, Sridhar Bandari,

Use the HTTP Content-Disposition header to signal that the web browser 
should allow users to open the document in an external application. 
Using the Content-Disposition header you can either specify that a 
document is to be opened by an external application or that it should 
be viewed inline. In order to have the document opened by an external 
application use a header like this:

  Content-Disposition: attachment

How you generate this header depends on what web page publishing system 
you are using. If you are using PHP, use the header() command to 
generated HTTP headers. 

The Content-Disposition header is formally described in RFC 2183 
(http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2183.txt).