Question: We have an ASP Classic application that provides document management.

We have a fetch page that fetches the document from SAN storage and delivers it to the user, based on whether or not they are logged in.

With IE6 and Word 2000 (when I wrote the code :)) The word documents displayed in the browser.

Now, with IE8 and Word 2010 installed, we are always prompted to open/save the document.

We:

1. Set the mimetype (Response.ContentType = GetMIMEType(basename))
2. Set the charset (REsponse.Charset = "")
3. Set the content disposition: Response.AddHeader "Content-Disposition", "inline; filename=""" & basename & """"
4. Binary write the file contents.

Has anyone come across an additional HTTP header or other mechanism for encouraging IE to display in word inline?

We do not think this is related to the BrowserFlags registry setting as that controls opening the document in a new window (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982995) whereas what is happening is we are being prompted for Open/Save/Cancel.

Answer: 
Use a serializer that supports references. DatacontractSerializer can do it for example. 
For xml, you can enable it in the DataContractSerializer for example
<http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sowmy/archive/2006/03/26/561188.aspx>
Don't have real evidence in my hands, but had a friend of mine that used [YAML](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YAML) for its Tree serialization, and was pretty sutisfied. 

At the end of the article you will find also a references to .NET libraries available.

Hope this helps.