1674267 - No option to remember download preferences for files sent with application/octet-stream

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: File Handling, defect, P3)

Description

[Passawit Kaovilai]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:82.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/82.0

Steps to reproduce:

Download a zoom.us meeting.

It triggers downloads of 4 files (sometimes 3) which includes .txt, .vtt, .mp4, and .m4a

Actual results:

.txt, .vtt, .mp4, and .m4a prompts or "Remember[ed] my selection" regarding Download's Open/Save preferences for each file extension.

Expected results:

.txt, .mp4, and .m4a prompts or "Remember[ed] my selection" regarding Download's Open/Save preferences for each file extension.

.vtt does not allow you to remember download preferrences.

Comment 1

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Passawit Kaovilai from comment #0)

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:82.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/82.0

Steps to reproduce:

Download a zoom.us meeting.

I don't understand what this means - can you elaborate?

It triggers downloads of 4 files (sometimes 3) which includes .txt, .vtt, .mp4, and .m4a

Actual results:

.txt, .vtt, .mp4, and .m4a prompts or "Remember[ed] my selection" regarding Download's Open/Save preferences for each file extension.

Expected results:

.txt, .mp4, and .m4a prompts or "Remember[ed] my selection" regarding Download's Open/Save preferences for each file extension.

.vtt does not allow you to remember download preferrences.

It's also not clear to us why you think that vtt should not be allowed to have selections remembered - or did you reverse the actual/expected results?

Comment 2

[Passawit Kaovilai]

It's also not clear to us why you think that vtt should not be allowed to have selections remembered - or did you reverse the actual/expected results?

I reversed the actual and expected results. I do not have edit access to above submission.
Also would be nice if we could have selections remembered per subdomain/domain name instead of for all websites.

ie. I don't want to ever save my bank statements pdfs but I would like to always save PDFs from my university's learning management system. (Moodle)

Comment 3

[Passawit Kaovilai]

I think vtt file got classified into one of those "risky" downloads like .exe executable.

Comment 4

[Passawit Kaovilai]

Attachment: vtt unable to remember download preferences

Comment 5

[Passawit Kaovilai]

Even if the file is an executable, or speculated to be, I think that domain/url specific exceptions should be allowed.

Comment 6

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Passawit Kaovilai from comment #2)

It's also not clear to us why you think that vtt should not be allowed to have selections remembered - or did you reverse the actual/expected results?

I reversed the actual and expected results. I do not have edit access to above submission.

OK, I will edit this to clarify.

(In reply to :Gijs (he/him) from comment #1)

(In reply to Passawit Kaovilai from comment #0)

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:82.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/82.0

Steps to reproduce:

Download a zoom.us meeting.

I don't understand what this means - can you elaborate?

Can you also answer this question? How can we reproduce the screenshot you attached?

Comment 7

[Passawit Kaovilai]

I tried to recreate what they had on zoom.us but couldn't reproduce on my own homemade index.html just yet.

It is still reproducible with zoom.us download button on a recorded meeting.

Actually I thought I would not be able to find an unlocked zoom recorded meeting but here is one.

Please click on the Download (3 files) button on the top right (desktop).

Please rename the bug to what ever is appropriate but my point is I want to save my download preferences from files on this site. No more popups.

Comment 8

[Passawit Kaovilai]

(In reply to Passawit Kaovilai from comment #7)

Actually I thought I would not be able to find an unlocked zoom recorded meeting but here is one.

Please click on the Download (3 files) button on the top right (desktop).

Expected: 3 files downloads without prompt
Actual: vtt file prompts and does not allow preference saving.

Comment 9

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:mak, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.

Comment 10

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Thank you for the testcase. I can reproduce the issue. This is a result of the server sending application/octet-stream mimetype. If it sent text/vtt, we would offer the checkbox.

We don't offer the checkbox because the association is with the mimetype, and the octet-stream mimetype is used for loads of different things, and as a result it doesn't make sense to store a preference for it (or we would unexpectedly use the same action for all kinds of other files).

The discussion in bug 1659008 is related - we want to store the association with the "real" mimetype if we know it, but there are some open questions about that.

Comment 11

[Passawit Kaovilai]

(In reply to :Gijs (he/him) from comment #10)

We don't offer the checkbox because the association is with the mimetype, and the octet-stream mimetype is used for loads of different things, and as a result it doesn't make sense to store a preference for it (or we would unexpectedly use the same action for all kinds of other files).

You have probably heard this before but, "Chrome doesn't have this issue".

Me as an end-user, I am not inspecting which mimetypes are sent by the server.

What I see is that I am expecting this .vtt file. It is clearly spelled out in the file name. If you can detect or sense that the file is going to be saved with an extension vtt, I think that is enough a reason to believe that it should have the same save/download preferences as text/vtt.

What you explained appears to be a back-end implementation issue that can be resolved to detect final file extension before deciding if download preferences are to be saved.

Comment 12

[:Gijs (he/him)]

(In reply to Passawit Kaovilai from comment #11)

(In reply to :Gijs (he/him) from comment #10)

We don't offer the checkbox because the association is with the mimetype, and the octet-stream mimetype is used for loads of different things, and as a result it doesn't make sense to store a preference for it (or we would unexpectedly use the same action for all kinds of other files).

You have probably heard this before but, "Chrome doesn't have this issue".

Me as an end-user, I am not inspecting which mimetypes are sent by the server.

Sure, but there will be other cases where the mimetype makes sense and there is either no filename at all, or it is misleading (jpeg files being server-side converted to be webp being a recent example).

What I see is that I am expecting this .vtt file. It is clearly spelled out in the file name. If you can detect or sense that the file is going to be saved with an extension vtt, I think that is enough a reason to believe that it should have the same save/download preferences as text/vtt.

What you explained appears to be a back-end implementation issue that can be resolved to detect final file extension before deciding if download preferences are to be saved.

Almost any valid software issue is an "implementation issue" that "can be resolved" - unfortunately that doesn't mean that doing so is easy.

Comment 13

[Passawit Kaovilai]

True. I guess at this point it's pretty clear which browser got more engineering power. Literally everything that is not Chrome or Firefox, is a chromium browser.