The future is web applications, and needs to provide the same capabilities as a WinForms, if the developer deems so. 90% of my sites are intranet based, so I do not have the fear of anonymous users. If you are using the .NET framework you have some options. You have the ability to create a server-side method or page dedicated to writing the document to the response stream. This will cause the parent page to postback, but it will prompt for download. If you are looking to do this without postback you this can achieved using AjaxPro, http://ajaxpro.schwarz-interactive.de, or other any other Ajax frameworks.