How to force file downloading with htaccess July 1st, 2009
Nearly every browser will show image oder video files you want to provide for download in the browser itself instead of opening a download dialog.
Most of the websites suggest to use this code in your .htaccess:
<FilesMatch "\.(jpg|zip|avi)$" > ForceType application/octet-stream </FilesMatch>
But this is not enough! Even when the MIME-Type is set to “octet-stream”, some browsers will still open the files their selfs because they have detected the .jpg or .avi file extension.
The solution to this is to add the following header:
<FilesMatch "\.(jpg|zip|avi)$" > ForceType application/octet-stream Header add Content-Disposition "attachment" </FilesMatch>
With this header every browser i tested opened a download dialog, regardless of which file extension is present.
