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In the "old times" Firefox asked me whether I wanted to download and then open, download into temp and then open, or download into a to-be-selected folder; with an addon I could force browse render as an option, too.

Yet, this required two mouse clicks in the "worst case" that the default selection didn't fit.

I think the best solution is: if no download attribute set and Content-Disposition is not "attachment", then render in the browser. If either condition is met, open a popup with large buttons immediately executing the action: download to default folder, download to temp (which will be deleted upon next browser start), download to specific folder, render in browser (if there's a registered handler plugin for this mimetype). Maybe add a checkbox "Open after download has finished", and maybe also add one "Try multi-stream download" (because many sites still limit single-stream bandwidth). Even more maybe, for video files add a "Preview with VLC" and fetch the required parts (header and final part of video) first, so I can stream and keep the file for later usage.



Firefox still does exactly what you ask for exactly the same way it did in the "old times".

Just go to Options->General->Downloads, tick Always ask me where to download files

Internet Explorer also works like this practically eliminating step 1,2 and 4 from your scenario above.




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