Chrome Adds Native Support for HTML download Attribute

Chrome's dev channel now supports the HTML spec's download attribute on a elements. The attribute tells the browser to download the linked resource rather than navigate to it.

Example: clicking a link to a PNG file with download="MyGoogleLogo.png" saves the file locally under that name, without the user leaving the current page.

The attribute is most valuable with blob: URLs and filesystem: URLs, since it provides a straightforward way to let users download content that your app generates or edits at runtime.

One limitation applies to cross-origin resources: under the spec's download policy, the attribute may not work on files hosted on another origin. In those cases the link behaves as a normal navigation link. Older Chrome versions (prior to 65) did allow cross-origin downloads, but this behavior was deprecated. To force a download from a different origin, use the Content-Disposition header instead.

Browser support in this release is limited to the current Chrome dev channel (version 14.0.835.15+).