Bugzilla

(In reply to John from comment #56)
> I know it's useless at this time to reiterate what a terrible idea it is for FireFox to permanently download a file to my computer without my permission when I simply view a PDF file using Adobe, but it is simply wrong for any program to do that.  I cannot repeat enough that such behavior is simply wrong.

What do you mean by view a PDF file using Adobe? Can you give some more details on that workflow? If Firefox is re-downloading files that are already on your file system, it sounds like a separate bug. If a PDF file is already saved on your file system and you open it in Firefox, it's not supposed to re-save it on your system. Firefox can open all sorts of files using the file:/// protocol. But if you open some web file, Firefox needs to save it somewhere.

It's always going to download a file to your computer. The only questions are where it's saved and whether it's permanent. Firefox is the only browser I know of that even bothered scheduling files for deletion, so this idea that it's "simply wrong" doesn't hold any water. It's a convenient quirk but hardly an industry-standard feature.

There's nothing in the UI that gives the impression that choosing "Open" would make the file somehow less permanent. It's something we have come to expect from having used Firefox, but it's not self-evident. Honestly I think if this was going to be added back as the _default_ behavior, it would make sense to change the label from "Open" to "Save File Temporarily and Open" or something. That would at least mitigate somewhat the risk of unexpected data loss.

But like I said before I think most of the harm would already be alleviated by just making it an opt-in pref.

> Somehow the question of whether it is saved to a temporary file or not seems to have been mixed in with whether the "Always Ask" option is selected, but it has nothing to do with that.

What do you mean? Firefox currently does not save files in the temp folder _at all_ unless you manually select the temp folder via the "Save As..." dialog.

> It has been mentioned that the download is triggered long before the "Always Ask" dialog is displayed.  That seems rather irrelevant since at the time the download is triggered it has to indicate where the file is to be downloaded.  At that point why is it so hard for FireFox to use a simple IF..Then to find out whether to use the temp folder or the download folder?

Nobody is saying it's hard for Firefox to do that. It's trivial. But for an "if-then" statement, you need a condition. What would it be checking? A user preference?

(In reply to John from comment #56)
> I know it's useless at this time to reiterate what a terrible idea it is for FireFox to permanently download a file to my computer without my permission when I simply view a PDF file using Adobe, but it is simply wrong for any program to do that.  I cannot repeat enough that such behavior is simply wrong.

What do you mean by view a PDF file using Adobe? Can you give some more details on that workflow? If Firefox is re-downloading files that are already on your file system, it sounds like a separate bug. If a PDF file is already saved on your file system and you open it in Firefox, it's not supposed to re-save it on your system. Firefox can open all sorts of files using the file:/// protocol. But if you open some web file, Firefox needs to save it somewhere.

It's always going to download a file to your computer. The only questions are where it's saved and whether it's permanent. Firefox is the only browser I know of that even bothered scheduling files for deletion, so this idea that it's "simply wrong" doesn't hold any water. It's a convenient quirk but hardly an industry-standard feature.

There's nothing in the UI that gives the impression that choosing "Open" would make the file somehow less permanent. It's something we have come to expect from having used Firefox, but it's not self-evident. Honestly I think if this was going to be added back as the _default_ behavior, it would make sense to change the label from "Open" to "Save File Temporarily and Open" or something. That would at least mitigate somewhat the risk of unexpected data loss.

But like I said before I think most of the harm would already be alleviated by just making it an opt-in pref.

> Somehow the question of whether it is saved to a temporary file or not seems to have been mixed in with whether the "Always Ask" option is selected, but it has nothing to do with that.

What do you mean? Firefox currently does not save files in the temp folder _at all_ unless you manually select the temp folder via the "Save As..." dialog. (or toggle the _temporary_ experimental pref `browser.download.improvements_to_download_panel`)

> It has been mentioned that the download is triggered long before the "Always Ask" dialog is displayed.  That seems rather irrelevant since at the time the download is triggered it has to indicate where the file is to be downloaded.  At that point why is it so hard for FireFox to use a simple IF..Then to find out whether to use the temp folder or the download folder?

Nobody is saying it's hard for Firefox to do that. It's trivial. But for an "if-then" statement, you need a condition. What would it be checking? A user preference?