I was just trying to download a file with Firefox (Twiki.tgz from www.twiki.org) and couldn't. All Firefox would do was open the file as if it was HTML and displayed random rubbish in the browser window. Right clicking on the link didn't offer me any useful options either.
IE just asked what I wanted to do and download it.
Chris Green wrote:
I was just trying to download a file with Firefox (Twiki.tgz from www.twiki.org) and couldn't. All Firefox would do was open the file as if it was HTML and displayed random rubbish in the browser window. Right clicking on the link didn't offer me any useful options either.
IE just asked what I wanted to do and download it.
WOrks fine with Mozilla and Konq.
Ian
On Wed, Nov 23, 2005 at 07:58:26PM +0000, Ian bell wrote:
Chris Green wrote:
I was just trying to download a file with Firefox (Twiki.tgz from www.twiki.org) and couldn't. All Firefox would do was open the file as if it was HTML and displayed random rubbish in the browser window. Right clicking on the link didn't offer me any useful options either.
IE just asked what I wanted to do and download it.
WOrks fine with Mozilla and Konq.
Maybe it's an oddity of the 1.5 release candidate.
Chris Green wrote:
On Wed, Nov 23, 2005 at 07:58:26PM +0000, Ian bell wrote:
Chris Green wrote:
I was just trying to download a file with Firefox (Twiki.tgz from www.twiki.org) and couldn't. All Firefox would do was open the file as if it was HTML and displayed random rubbish in the browser window. Right clicking on the link didn't offer me any useful options either.
IE just asked what I wanted to do and download it.
WOrks fine with Mozilla and Konq.
Maybe it's an oddity of the 1.5 release candidate.
As others have already mentioned, it appears that the issue is the content-type headers sent by either the CGI script or being overridden by the web server.
If you view the Page Info (CTRL-I or Tools -> Page Info in Firefox 1.0.7) you will see it is being told the content is of mime-type "text/plain" - the file you are looking to download appears to be flagged as an inline text file and is being displayed as such by Firefox as per the RFCs and standards. Your average gzipped file (in this case tar-gzipped) would be of mime-type "application/x-gzip".
This would certainly confuse the browser and can quite definately produce the results you can see. I have discovered the same in the past when writing file download scripts such as the one used here. I have had exactly the same effects displayed when the header information is incomplete - I have even once managed to get the reverse effect (firefox would download perfectly and recognise the file from the mime type, but IE wouldn't as it was seeing a .phtml filename and not recognising the file wasn't a web page - I think, however, this was more complicated as I since found some weird headers being passed down in front of the ones generated by my script)
I cannot speak of the lack of "Save target as..." option in the context-menu of the link, as I have not yet moved to 1.5 beta though, and I would say that is something to raise with the Firefox dev teams as I constantly use that functionality.
Just my 2 pence
Jim
p.s. apologies to adam for the previous message - too early on the morning after for me to have noticed!
The message 20051123194646.GA22202@areti.co.uk from Chris Green chris@areti.co.uk contains these words:
I was just trying to download a file with Firefox (Twiki.tgz from www.twiki.org) and couldn't. All Firefox would do was open the file as if it was HTML and displayed random rubbish in the browser window. Right clicking on the link didn't offer me any useful options either.
IE just asked what I wanted to do and download it.
You just choose 'save to file' and it downloads it - well, it saves the stuff on your screen.
On Wed, Nov 23, 2005 at 08:12:07PM +0000, Anthony Anson wrote:
The message 20051123194646.GA22202@areti.co.uk from Chris Green chris@areti.co.uk contains these words:
I was just trying to download a file with Firefox (Twiki.tgz from www.twiki.org) and couldn't. All Firefox would do was open the file as if it was HTML and displayed random rubbish in the browser window. Right clicking on the link didn't offer me any useful options either.
IE just asked what I wanted to do and download it.
You just choose 'save to file' and it downloads it - well, it saves the stuff on your screen.
It's the same for me in Firefox 1.07. If I just [left] click the download link my screen fills with junk. If I right click the link I don't get offered a 'Save to File' option.
Ah, it's the beta releases cause the problem, the stable ones are fine. Try going to http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/TWikiBetaRelease and clicking on the top Download link.
On Wed, 23 Nov 2005 19:46:46 +0000 Chris Green chris@areti.co.uk wrote:
I was just trying to download a file with Firefox (Twiki.tgz from www.twiki.org) and couldn't.
There isn't a link to a file called that on that page, so I'm not really sure what you're on about. The downloads seemed to work OK in firefox here though.
Problems such as the one you describe can be caused by the server sending the wrong content-type header. IE tends to ignore it and use the file extension to decide what to do.
Joe x
On 23-Nov-05 Joe Button wrote:
On Wed, 23 Nov 2005 19:46:46 +0000 Chris Green chris@areti.co.uk wrote:
I was just trying to download a file with Firefox (Twiki.tgz from www.twiki.org) and couldn't.
There isn't a link to a file called that on that page, so I'm not really sure what you're on about. The downloads seemed to work OK in firefox here though.
Well, it's not that difficult to find from that page! (In extremis, use the Search facility for "TWiki.tgz"). You'll find one at:
http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/viewfile/Plugins/TWiki?rev=1.1&filename=TWiki.t...
I've not had problames of the kind described with the firefox-1.0.4 which is the latest I upgraded to (a couple of months ago). Ever! I have *always* been informed what kind of file I'm clicking on, and asked what I want to do with it.
Well, not until just now, anyway -- I clicked on the above URL to see what would happen, and just got the screenful of binary garbage that Chris describes.
So there's something wrong with that URL (only I'm not expert enough to suss out what it might be).
I've not tries that same URL woth other browsers, so cannot comment on whether it's a firefox thing.
Problems such as the one you describe can be caused by the server sending the wrong content-type header. IE tends to ignore it and use the file extension to decide what to do.
Best wishes to all, Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 23-Nov-05 Time: 20:53:03 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/viewfile/Plugins/TWiki?rev=1.1&filename=TWiki.t...
Response headers say: content-disposition: inline;filename=TWiki.tgz
Ie. the problem is that the cgi script tells Firefox to display the content inline, which it quite reasonably does.
Joe
On Wed, Nov 23, 2005 at 08:27:33PM +0000, Joe Button wrote:
On Wed, 23 Nov 2005 19:46:46 +0000 Chris Green chris@areti.co.uk wrote:
I was just trying to download a file with Firefox (Twiki.tgz from www.twiki.org) and couldn't.
There isn't a link to a file called that on that page, so I'm not really sure what you're on about. The downloads seemed to work OK in firefox here though.
I was downloading one of the beta releases, see my previous reply.
-
Anthony Anson -
Chris Green -
Ian bell -
Jim Rippon -
Joe Button -
Ted.Harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk