is there a way to prevent a browser from opening an mp3 in a new browser window?
i have a normal link to mp3 file like
<a href="link_to_mp3">some.mp3</a>
and of course you can download it with right click -> save as. but some users don't know that. so if they click on a link, a new window opens where they can listen to that mp3.
issue is, i want the users to download the files once instead of listen to them thousand times over my server ;)
Through html only you cannot force the link to open a file save dialog.
Instead you can achieve that through PHP and with some custom headers as seen here
A simple download.php file could look like:
<?php
$file = $_GET['file'];
$dir = "path/to/files/";
if(!file)
{
die('file not found');
}
else
{
$local_file = $dir . $file['filename'];
$file = fopen($local_file, "r");
header("Cache-Control: public");
header('Content-Type: application/octet-stream');
header("Content-Description: File Transfer");
header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$file");
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");
// set download rate
$download_rate = 100.0;
// fetch the file
fread($file, round($download_rate * 1024));
// close the file stream
fclose($file);
}
?>
Where you can specify the directory where all your files as saved, as well as a download rate if needed to limit the speed at which the file can be downloaded.
Forgot to mention that you will then change your links to:
<a href="download.php?file=test.mp3">some.mp3</a>
where test.mp3 will be changed to your particular download