Bugzilla

I'm using Firefox 102.0, and am still seeing a loop similar to that described. 

Environment: Ubuntu 21.10 with LXQt and FileZilla installed.

Step: Follow an FTP link to text or image data.

Expected result: fetches data and displays it. Failing that there is an explanatory message telling me what is wrong and how I can see the data.

Actual result: Pop-up window 'Choose an application to open the ftp link' with Firefox as the only choice. Choosing 'FIrefox' and clicking 'Open Link' gives a white screen with the address in the tab but no feedback. Choosing 'Choose other application' and selecting `/usr/bin/firefox' opens a fresh tab which is also plain white without information. This then results in multiple blank tabs. FileZilla is not listed as an option. Selecting `/usr/bin/filezilla` seems to pass the command-line parameter OK (although Filezilla connects to the server after a warning but does not navigate to the correct directory or download the required file the way a browser would).

Comment: Possibly the fix has not yet made it into Firefox for Ubuntu 102.0. The explanation on the blog linked above for FIrefox deprecating anonymous FTP cites 'security' without explaining why FTP is any less secure than HTTP. My main concern is that much scientific data is still only available via FTP. Of course there are still ftp command-line clients that are unaffected by any security issue I am aware of. Removing basic web-browser functionality would seems to be a major regression. The blog has comments citing 'Also, a part of the FTP code is very old, unsafe and hard to maintain and we found a lot of security bugs in it in the past.' (unsafe in memory allocation or how?) Another commenter describes that as 'They dont make browsers for techies any more, they are for norms.' whatever that means. Techies may find another way of browsing FTP, but it's very frustrating when working and just expecting software to work or at least give a helpful error message.

I'm using Firefox 102.0, and am still seeing a loop similar to that described. 

Environment: Ubuntu 21.10 with LXQt and FileZilla installed.

Step: Follow an FTP link to text or image data.

Expected result: fetches data and displays it. Failing that there is an explanatory message telling me what is wrong and how I can see the data.

Actual result: Pop-up window 'Choose an application to open the ftp link' with Firefox as the only choice. Choosing 'FIrefox' and clicking 'Open Link' gives a white screen with the address in the tab but no feedback. Choosing 'Choose other application' and selecting `/usr/bin/firefox` opens a fresh tab which is also plain white without information. This then results in multiple blank tabs. FileZilla is not listed as an option. Selecting `/usr/bin/filezilla` seems to pass the command-line parameter OK (although Filezilla connects to the server after a warning but does not navigate to the correct directory or download the required file the way a browser would).

Comment: Possibly the fix has not yet made it into Firefox for Ubuntu 102.0. The explanation on the blog linked above for FIrefox deprecating anonymous FTP cites 'security' without explaining why FTP is any less secure than HTTP. My main concern is that much scientific data is still only available via FTP. Of course there are still ftp command-line clients that are unaffected by any security issue I am aware of. Removing basic web-browser functionality would seems to be a major regression. The blog has comments citing 'Also, a part of the FTP code is very old, unsafe and hard to maintain and we found a lot of security bugs in it in the past.' (unsafe in memory allocation or how?) Another commenter describes that as 'They dont make browsers for techies any more, they are for norms.' whatever that means. Techies may find another way of browsing FTP, but it's very frustrating when working and just expecting software to work or at least give a helpful error message.