# Making my web browser stop downloading prompts
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-my-web-browser-stop-downloading-prompts/659766
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [May 31, 2013, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-my-web-browser-stop-downloading-prompts/659766 "2013-05-31T02:57:31Z")
**Posts on this page:** 11
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@antonio107](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/antonio107)
#### Post date: [May 31, 2013, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-my-web-browser-stop-downloading-prompts/659766/1 "2013-05-31T02:57:31Z")
I got a summer internship that involves processing a huge amounts of public interventions from a government regulatory body. That involves opening up these individual web pages, reading the (usually 1-2 sentence long) pitch, and then parsing the substantive from the form letters/junk. 5000+ pages, I’m going to be at this for a few days.
Problem is, every page I try to open–despite being an HTML file–gives me this prompt:
[ ](http://tinypic.com/images/goodbye.jpg)
It does this on every browser, in various forms, and actually clicking it to make it open the HTML file in a seperate window takes about 3-4 seconds on my computer. I suck at math, but it feels like I’m wasting a lot of time doing that, especially for the chaff reports that I don’t enter into the spreadsheet. I may have to do it for another file, so if I’m doing 10-20k times over the summer, I’d like to cut any corners that I can.
Can I make it just…go away? Automatically open the thing without prompting me? Any other solutions?
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### Author:  [@tellyworth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tellyworth)
#### Post date: [May 31, 2013, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-my-web-browser-stop-downloading-prompts/659766/2 "2013-05-31T02:59:19Z")
Does this help? - [Avoid the "This Type of File Can Harm Your Computer" Message in Chrome](http://lifehacker.com/5703462/disable-the-this-type-of-file-can-harm-your-computer-message-in-chrome)
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### Author:  [@antonio107](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/antonio107)
#### Post date: [May 31, 2013, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-my-web-browser-stop-downloading-prompts/659766/3 "2013-05-31T03:03:20Z")
> [@tellyworth](#):
>
> Does this help? - [Avoid the "This Type of File Can Harm Your Computer" Message in Chrome | Lifehacker](http://lifehacker.com/5703462/disable-the-this-type-of-file-can-harm-your-computer-message-in-chrome)
Well, it’s close. In this case, however, what I want it to do is actually _open the page_. I don’t really want to download 5,000, and then manually open them.
Some of the submissions are in .doc or .pdf, but that vast vast majority are HTML files. I’m in fact not even sure why these HTML files are somehow different than the HTML files that say, are displaying the message board you and I are conversing on right now…
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### Author:  [@Folacin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Folacin)
#### Post date: [May 31, 2013, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-my-web-browser-stop-downloading-prompts/659766/4 "2013-05-31T10:47:02Z")
> [@antonio107](#):
>
> Well, it’s close. In this case, however, what I want it to do is actually _open the page_. I don’t really want to download 5,000, and then manually open them.
>
> Some of the submissions are in .doc or .pdf, but that vast vast majority are HTML files. I’m in fact not even sure why these HTML files are somehow different than the HTML files that say, are displaying the message board you and I are conversing on right now…
I imagine that they aren’t opening because they aren’t coded on the page displaying them as a link - but there probably isn’t anything you can do about that.
You could try setting the security settings in your browser to the lowest, least secure option. Of course, you’ll want to set them back up before you go to any site out in the wild.
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### Author:  [@antonio107](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/antonio107)
#### Post date: [May 31, 2013, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-my-web-browser-stop-downloading-prompts/659766/5 "2013-05-31T17:52:17Z")
Even that doesn’t seem to outright eliminate the prompt.
Of all the browsers so far, Firefox seems to have the least annoying option with a dialogue Window. Safari on iPad actually just OPENS the page, but it’s slower to use my fingers than a mouse and keyboard alt F4. Argh! ☹
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### Author:  [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)
#### Post date: [May 31, 2013, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-my-web-browser-stop-downloading-prompts/659766/6 "2013-05-31T18:10:36Z")
So, I take it these files are on an actual website, since you report being able to open them on an iPad? If it were local, I’d just recommend avoiding all the hoopla and loading the files in Word or something. Since Word won’t open JavaScript, it shouldn’t need to warn you.
But if it’s an actual website, it sounds like there’s a problem on their end–they’ve got the server set up where it forces the files to be downloaded. On any modern web browser, that means that it will prompt you on whether to download it, no matter how many times you tell it to always download. It’s intended as a way to override the default behavior, usually for important files. (For example, it’s really useful to make you download an MP3 you bought, instead of having it play in your browser, and possibly not saving it.)
Since you mention using Firefox, I do have a possible solution: the [InlineDisposition](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/inlinedisposition/) addon. If the server is set up the way I think it is, that should fix the problem.
EDIT: I’d be more sure of myself if you’d shown a screenshot of the Firefox error message. Please do that if this doesn’t work. I’m most familiar with that web browser.
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### Author:  [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)
#### Post date: [May 31, 2013, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-my-web-browser-stop-downloading-prompts/659766/7 "2013-05-31T18:39:46Z")
The above won’t work if the server is actually lying about what type of file it is, which is another way to force a download. If that’s the case, the [Force Content Type](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/force-content-type/) addon may help.
Setting it up for your specific site would might be a bit tricky if you aren’t used to regular expressions, so feel free to ask for help, via PM if necessary (if you don’t want to reveal the site address in public.)
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### Author:  [@Blakeyrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blakeyrat)
#### Post date: [May 31, 2013, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-my-web-browser-stop-downloading-prompts/659766/9 "2013-05-31T21:17:25Z")
> [@antonio107](#):
>
> Well, it’s close. In this case, however, what I want it to do is actually _open the page_. I don’t really want to download 5,000, and then manually open them.
>
> Some of the submissions are in .doc or .pdf, but that vast vast majority are HTML files. I’m in fact not even sure why these HTML files are somehow different than the HTML files that say, are displaying the message board you and I are conversing on right now…
The web server is responsible for telling the client (browser) what type of file it is… the file extension “.html” is actually ignored by all modern browsers (although IE used to respect them.)
So the problem here is really out-of-your-hand-- whoever set up the web server is either not setting a MIME type on those .html files, or setting the incorrect MIME type (say: “application/binary” instead of “text/html”) causing the browser to believe the file is intended to be downloaded.
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### Author:  [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)
#### Post date: [June 1, 2013, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-my-web-browser-stop-downloading-prompts/659766/10 "2013-06-01T03:47:31Z")
> [@Blakeyrat](#):
>
> The web server is responsible for telling the client (browser) what type of file it is… the file extension “.html” is actually ignored by all modern browsers (although IE used to respect them.)
>
> So the problem here is really out-of-your-hand-- whoever set up the web server is either not setting a MIME type on those .html files, or setting the incorrect MIME type (say: “application/binary” instead of “text/html”) causing the browser to believe the file is intended to be downloaded.
_Au contraire_. The addon in my second post will change the MIME type for a given URL. These sorts of tweaks are why I love Firefox.
Antonio has PMed me and we are discussing getting said addon working for him. I’ve got it for the URL he sent me, at least, for HTML files.
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### Author:  [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)
#### Post date: [June 2, 2013, 7:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-my-web-browser-stop-downloading-prompts/659766/11 "2013-06-02T07:26:25Z")
If anyone cares, this is resolved now. We had to use both addons I recommended to get it to work. The “fake” MIME type was application/octet-stream, a really common one that just means digital file, basically.
Thought it would be good to leave this information just in case someone else stumbled upon this thread.
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### Author:  [@antonio107](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/antonio107)
#### Post date: [June 2, 2013, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/making-my-web-browser-stop-downloading-prompts/659766/12 "2013-06-02T13:44:33Z")
> [@BigT](#):
>
> If anyone cares, this is resolved now. We had to use both addons I recommended to get it to work. The “fake” MIME type was application/octet-stream, a really common one that just means digital file, basically.
>
> Thought it would be good to leave this information just in case someone else stumbled upon this thread.
Yup! Good call. Thanks again!!