I’m currently working on a site for a client and they have attached PDFs that open in modal windows, but have included language for users to right-click and download them adjacent to the links. I used the generic language “Save link as …” but my client couldn’t find that option in the right-click contextual dialog. So, I thought to myself, “hmm, how should I fix this for them?”

So, I wrote a quick little PHP function to produce User Agent specific “download this link” language.

function contextual_download_text(){

	if(isset($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'])){
		$agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
	}

	if(preg_match('/.*?Firefox/i',$agent)){
		// Firefox
		$dl_link = "Save Link As ...";
	} elseif (preg_match('/.*?MSIE/i',$agent)) {
		// IE
		$dl_link = "Save Target As ...";
	} elseif (preg_match('/.*?Chrome/i',$agent)) {
		// Chrome
		$dl_link = "Save link As ...";
	} elseif (preg_match('/.*?Safari/i',$agent)) {
		// Safari
		$dl_link = "Download Linked File As...";
	} else {
		// default to IE, why not?
		$dl_link = "Save Target As ...";
	}
	
	return $dl_link;

}

Then echo the function in your markup.

< ?php echo contextual_download_text(); ?>

Published on June 29, 2011