How IE handles ZIP files...

Sometimes when I click on a web site's link to a zip file, it gives me the option to download the file to the hard disk.

Other times (seems to depend on the web site), it opens the zip directly in WinZip without asking to download to the hard disk.

What controls this and how can I change it so that it always prompts me to save the file?

I have tried looking in the "File Types" settings, but no where does it seem to give me the option to control this. There is the "Confirm Open After Download" checkbox, but that's not the same thing, is it? I want to prompt for downloading, not confirm open after download.

(Yes, I know that it downloaded it to my Temporary Internet Files directory and I could grab it from there, that's not my question. I know that in some cases I can also right-click on the link and say "Save Target As". That's also not my question.)

Hm. Seems that "confirm open after download", despite being worded as a description of something that I specifically do NOT want, is in fact the option I want to use.

Someone smack the guy who wrote the text of that dialog box.

I believe "autoopen" is specified by the registry key "EditFlags" underneath the registry entry for the file type.

For instance, HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/.pdf's (Default) points to AcroExch.Document. If you open HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT/AcroExch.Document, you should be able to add a REG_BINARY key called "EditFlags" with the value "00 00 01 00".

So the key then is figuring out what file type it's mapping to ... Obviously you can check .zip first to see ... You may want to check the MIME Database in the Registry and see if that maps to something interesting too ....

Thanks! That's great information!