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Posted by Harlan Messinger on 01/07/08 21:30
Sheldon Glickler wrote:
> Harlan Messinger wrote:
>> Sheldon Glickler wrote:
>>> I want to be able to download a file. If the file is a zip or an
>>> exe, the user is asked where to save the file
>>
>>
>> I'm confused. First you say that *you* want to be able to download a
>> file, and then you imply that you're talking about someone else.
>
> The customer wants to limit the number of downloads and he doesn't want
> the pdf to display to the user. He wants the user to display it on his
> own after he has downloaded it. I know this is silly since once the
> user has downloaded the file, he can always copy it to any number of
> machines, but the customer IS the customer.....
If site is for use by the customer's employees, then the customer can
have the employees' browsers configured to prompt the user. If it's for
your customer's customers, it isn't any of *his* business and it doesn't
make any sense anyway. Have you tried discussing this with your
customer? Maybe you have, but I'm always surprised by the number of
people who assume outright that customers never want to hear advice and
feedback from the knowledgable people performing work for them. A
constructive approach is not to criticize the instructions but to point
out likely *consequences* that "you may not have thought about", including:
* consequences that may be undesirable
* consequences that will be at odds with other stated
purposes of the customer himself
* consequences that will eliminate any perceived benefit
* the consequence that the requested feature won't actually
have the effect that the customer assumed it would
have when he requested it, which means he'll be
spending money for nothing
I haven't always convinced the customer by following this approach, but:
* it has often helped clarify things
for customers that weren't
previously clear to them,
* I have often directed customers
to solutions that they like better
than the ones they had conceived
for themselves,
* I have often gotten a better understanding
of why they requested *their* approach,
which helped me do a better job of
fulfilling the request OR of making an
even *better* counter-suggestion,
* I have usually gotten credit for being
helpful and attentive--the customers
have liked knowing that I'm paying
attention, and
* the response has never been "How dare you
question me?" and has rarely been even
milder form of that retort.
In your case, has your customer considered the possibility that not all
his users will be able to find a file after having downloaded it? What
is their level of sophistication?
It isn't clear to *me* how prompting the user to save the files will
have the effect of limiting the number that they download. Is it clear
to you? Anyway, the way to accomplish that is by linking to a
pass-through routine rather than to the documents themselves, one that
keeps either a session counter (if the limit is per-session) or a
database-based counter (if the limit is per authenticated user) and
checks it before feeding the content of the document to the user.
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