I should probably be updating you all on the crazy long weekend I had. I saw many Michigan friends, drank a lot, started a company, cooked a new dish. But that must wait. Today I discovered yet another approach to automatically initiating a software download. This time, from Google Earth. […]

Following up on my three windy posts about tracking download statistics and javascript, I’ve noticed two other, simpler approaches in common use. Apple uses an invisible iFrame for the iTunes download, like so:

<iframe width=0% height=0% scrolling=”no” frameborder=”0″ src=’http://appldnld.apple.com.edgesuite.net/content.info.apple.com/iTunes7/
Win/061-2794.20061031.iTZW2/iTunesSetup.exe’></iframe>

No javascript required, apparently. I’ve also seen various other sites use a much simpler javascript approach […]