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 of just calling “location.href=’http://example.com/download.exe’” with their onLoad handler. This apparently doesn’t require different behavior based on browser type. If I have time I’m going to play with these other options on a bunch of platforms and see which ones seem most reliable.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 12th, 2006 at 4:12 pm and is filed under Geekery. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.