IE9, Selenium: how to disable download prompting bar ? - testing

Question

I need, for testing purpose, to disable download prompting bar in IE9 (that asks for opening or saving the file), otherwise I cannot test a feature of my app that lets to download a file.
There are download managers that allow to do it, I am wondering where I may put my hands (which Window's registry) in order to remove this download prompting bar.

Answer 1

You can try to switch to new window and close it or execute following code.
driver.switchTo().alert().dismiss();

Answer 2

You don't say which language you are using, but I was able to do this using the following Ruby code.
Note that it does not touch the registry, as asked in your question, but uses the keyboard to interact with the IE9 download bar. It does not disable the download bar altogether, but effectively does the same thing by getting IE to save the file once a download has been invoked.
Selenium can't see the IE9 download bar, so you can't interact with it using Selenium.
require 'win32ole'
#assuming download has started, and IE9 download window is now visible
if $browser = "IE" then
wsh = WIN32OLE.new('Wscript.Shell')
wsh.AppActivate('My webpage - Windows Internet Explorer')
sleep 1
wsh.SendKeys('%s;') # $browser.send_keys #doesn't work - because IE download window is not on the web page.
end