I have a site where a user can select a document and then click Download. So I do a window.open() to a page that calls a web service, I get back the file as a Stream from a Dime attachment and I write it to the Response.OutputStream. This works, but I still have a little blank window open from my original window.open() command. What's the best way to get rid of the little blank window the window.open() produces?

Trigger the webservice download from the click event of (I am assuming) the button the user clicks to download the file.

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I'm not quite sure what you mean. I trigger the window.open() from the onclick event. How else would I trigger the web service download onclick? The web service just sends a Dime attachment to the caller. Do you mean to somehow call the web service directly from javascript on the client?

Your posting this question in an ASP.NET forum so, I assume, you are using .NET Web Forms; is that correct or are you using straight X/HTML

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Yes, I am using C# ASP.Net 1.1. Maybe my whole methodology is wrong. This is my first file download window.

The user selects an item in a Datagrid and then clicks a "Download" function. I then do a window.open() and pass the id of the document to be downloaded in the querystring. I then call a web service from the newly opened window's server-side C# code and get the document back as a Dime attachment. I then set the Response.ContentType and write the file stream into the OutputResponse stream. The file download works, but the window from the window.open() is still there.

You don't need to open a window to start a file download, simply pushing the data down through the response stream will cause the Download dialog box to open. So, in your click event handler of your button, instead of calling window.open() call the logic that you are using in the file download window. This should work equally as well.

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Thanks. I knew I was making it harder than it needed to be. What confused me was that I thought channeling the file through the output stream would overwrite the normal HTML in the stream that gets written to the client. I probably don't understand the lifecycle of the output stream well enough. Anyway, thanks.

The page is not resent, so really there is nothing to be overwritten here. The response contains nothing but the downloaded file.