[whatwg] "Content-Disposition" property for <a> tags

[Bjartur Thorlacius]

On 5/26/11, Michal Zalewski <lcamtuf at coredump.cx> wrote:
> Keep in mind that the mechanism *is* extremely imperfect. It only
> works for MIME types and extensions recognized by the browser (which
> is a small list). There's a large disconnect between this set, the set
> handled by the OS, and the actual logic used to control content
> disposition later on (much more messy on Linux than on Windows,
> interestingly).
>
On Linux you may have comprehensive mailcap lists in /etc, or better
yet the filename extension to MIME type mappings used by httpds.

> Unless it becomes common for file systems to support MIME type
> metadata for every file, and for all client applications to honor it,
> I really think that giving the markup such control over content
> disposition does more harm than good.
>
Browsers need to recognize the filename extensions to be able to
utilize the filename hint securely, and the filename hint's raison
d'être is providing filename extensions in case the browser doesn't
know it. It's therefore harmful when it's potentially useful.