forcing file downloads

I know this has been discussed many times, but I've been hunting through the archives with very little resolution on the issue. I've found the following note in the annotated manual: > Additional notes to my workaround on Q266305: > > I have tested my findings with PDF, XLS, DOC and ZIP. However JPG and GIF > didn't make IE pop up the download box. By changing content type from > "octet-stream" to "force-download" (or some undefined > type), it will work. Of course, we need to take care of other browsers > too. Here is the improved code, hope it helps: > > header("Content-type: application/force-download"); > > if (strstr($_SERVER["HTTP_USER_AGENT"], "MSIE")) > header("Content-Disposition: filename=$myfile" . > "%20"); // For IE > else > header("Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=$myfile"); > // For Other browsers > > Note: If you are using session together with this download, you will need > to add the following line BEFORE the code above to make IE work: > > session_cache_limiter(""); 1. Is this a widely accepted practice for forcing downloads (a pop-up window to download a file), given the problems with older versions of IE? 2. Can someone tell me what the %20 is there for? Regards, Justin French