Comments on: Downloadify: Client-Side File Generation Using JavaScript and Flash

By: Kelley

Kelley — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 22:59:18 +0000

David
I just wanted to run a couple of things out there.
1) It took me a couple of hours before I figured out that I needed a place holder in the form of an element that had the id=downloadify.
2) I have a web page that lets users define the parts they want on a bike, much like a web page that lets users define their build on building a computer.
All my code is javascript on the client side and the downloadify looked like a good solution to getting the information into a spread sheet through .csv file.
It works very nicely and I was able to put a couple of formulas and column headers in the file. The problems is, the button does not even show up in FireFox. And Chrome adds \n and 16 spaces after the first line item.
Any ideas? Any help would be appreciated
example web page http://bikemountain.info/926worksheet/926erWorksheetZ.html

By: Aditya

Aditya — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:29:25 +0000

I tried initiating the downloadify object with the Mootools Swiff plugin, but had not success. Is it possible to do so?

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 00:37:30 +0000

@Douglas Neiner: Ok, that makes sense, didn’t think about it like that :)

By: Douglas Neiner

Douglas Neiner — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:14:40 +0000

@Dave: This isn’t a replacement for that method at all. This is so front end functionality (for instance David’s code snippets) can be downloaded without server interaction. If David wanted to add that functionality without Downloadify, he would have to post every snippet back to the server before he could trigger a download of the data.

One benefit of this is that the download triggers instantly. On an overtaxed server, and when data can be repurposed on the client side, this will greatly increase speed to download.

The sample project that uses this as a good example is http://starter.pixelgraphics.us It is a plugin starter for jQuery. Once the page loads, the user can generate as many variations as they want without any trips to the server.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 08:00:37 +0000

@David Walsh: Though I wonder what the added bonus of using this over the tried-and-proven method of letting your language of choice crank out the proper headers to trigger a file download. Thoughts?

By: David Walsh

David Walsh — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 04:26:36 +0000

@brett, @Kevin: Easy. I hope to use this on my site site. Look at 95% of my posts. I have code snippets everywhere. I’d love to offer a “download snippet” link which would use Downloadify. I find it hard to believe you couldn’t thing of a use for this.

By: brett

brett — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 04:16:58 +0000

I agree with Kevin, can you give a real world example of its usefulness?

By: Douglas Neiner

Douglas Neiner — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:49:06 +0000

@Nicolas: There seems to be large misunderstanding of the limitations of data URI’s. First there is limited browser support. Second, you cannot pre-supply a file name. Finally, having worked for the last number of years to make sure a user never has to “right click and choose save” to download by setting proper headers, etc, it sure feels like 3 steps backwards in the interest of progress.

I think browsers will get there eventually, but I really think we are a few years out to get what I consider serious usability issues worked out as well full cross-browser support.

By: Nicolas

Nicolas — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:37:56 +0000

Okay I didn’t expect this crap to actually parse HTML.

Second try:
Right click here and select ‘save to disk’

By: Nicolas

Nicolas — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 00:37:15 +0000

This should be doable without Flash.Right click here and select 'save to disk'