Detect when browser receives file download

Question

I have a page that allows the user to download a dynamically-generated file. It takes a long time to generate, so I\'d like to show a \"waiting\" indicator. The problem is,

Answer 1

When the user triggers the generation of the file, you could simply assign a unique ID to that "download", and send the user to a page which refreshes (or checks with AJAX) every few seconds. Once the file is finished, save it under that same unique ID and...

• If the file is ready, do the download.
• If the file is not ready, show the progress.

Then you can skip the whole iframe/waiting/browserwindow mess, yet have a really elegant solution.