240301 - Encoding option on the right click menu over pages

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: General, enhancement)

Description

[ezervoud]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7b) Gecko/20040411 Firefox/0.8.0+ (djeter)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7b) Gecko/20040411 Firefox/0.8.0+ (djeter)

The problem is the following. Many web designers, for whatever reason, do not
correctly implement character encoding on the server. If I'm not mistaken, IE
can automatically detect the correct encoding so they don't see the need for
doing this. Secondly, companies have the need either to restrict users from the
pull down menus, or simply need to provide more real estate for their apps.
Therefore, we, users, cannot change the encoding to reflect the desired
language. IE does implement this feature through right-clicking as well, so
there is no problem in the IE land. Not exactly the case in the Mozilla based
browsers.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.

Comment 1

[Andrew Hagen]

Possibly related to bug 236866.

Comment 2

[ezervoud]

(In reply to comment #1)
> Possibly related to bug 236866.

I would call 236866 "wishful thinking". I don't think that the above bug can be
solved by improving only the client (FF). If I'm not mistaken the server side
"declares" or should "declare" the correct character coding by wwwf. MS does not
fully conforms to this standard, and is solving this issue in a proprietary way
between IIS and IE. BTW even MS has implemented "Encoding" through right-clicking 

Comment 3

[Constantine A. Murenin]

Please, change the summary to reflect your specific ideas. Do you just want the
Encoding menu on a right-click on the page area? Then say it in the summary. 

FYI, there are already auto-detection schemes in Mozilla App Suite. 

Comment 4

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

View -> Character Encoding. We're not adding a context menu for this.

Comment 5

[ezervoud]

Asa, the problem arises in sites that for whatever reason remove the access to
buttons and the toolbar. In this case you cannot use "View -> Character Encoding".
Citibank's on-line banking is a good example

Comment 6

[ezervoud]

Asa, the problem arises in sites that for whatever reason remove the access to
buttons and the toolbar. In this case you cannot use "View -> Character Encoding".
Citibank's on-line banking is a good example

Comment 7

[ezervoud]

I guess that the problem is that I'm leaving in a non-English speaking country.
That's why people cannot realize the problem

Comment 8

[ezervoud]

Attachment: Citibank online banking

Please see attached, which is a pop-up from Citibank's on-line banking. It
shows exactly why there is no option available to change the encoding.

Comment 9

[Andrew Hagen]

Yeah. I think we need this. Probably need it for the suite as well.

Comment 10

[Jo Hermans]

*** Bug 265225 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 11

[noam]

(In reply to comment #4)
> View -> Character Encoding. We're not adding a context menu for this.

For years, we (all those people living outside the U.S.) have been waiting for
decent multilanguage support in browsers. At the time, there were special tools
developed (!!!) that reversed the characters on html pages so that Netscape 4
users could also read them. 

But eventualy everybody got tired and IE now has 99% market share here. There
are many people who want to switch back to Mozilla browsers - but we must first
to be to read the pages easily :-(

Comment 12

[noam]

(In reply to comment #4)
> View -> Character Encoding. We're not adding a context menu for this.

...One more thing - there is already a context menu for "Switch Page Direction".
This is useless for non-english right-to-ledt pages if you can not change
Character Encoding as well to view the text itself...

Comment 13

[Andrew Hagen]

For those of us on the English-speaking web, this would be almost completely
useless.

For most of the world, though, it would probably be useful. 

How about making this a configurable option? 

Comment 14

[agumiya]

I`m live in Israel, and this enhancement for us here is crucial. I really don't
like to use the "view this page in IE" option, just to change the encoding, and
that what I did at start. Now I right-click the page and choose "send link"
option. That action opens my Thunderbird with a mail, and in it I see the URL.
copy-paste it to a new window or tab gives me a full page with original menus,
and than I can change the enconding. But this is not the way I wish to work with
Firefox!

Comment 15

[Leif Johnson]

This is a severe interface restriction for users who don't have access to the
Firefox application menu (for whatever reason: in popup windows, due to
administrative limits, etc.). I don't see the advantage of prohibiting users
from ungarbling poorly detected content.

Perhaps Firefox could include an encoding submenu in the context menu only when
the application menu isn't visible, or only when the context menu applies to a
particular frame.

Comment 16

[agumiya]

Ok guys. There is an extension for this bug. It called "Right Encoding"
https://addons.update.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&version=1.0&os=Windows&numpg=50&id=371
it is only a 0.1 version but it works.

Have fun.

Comment 17

[ezervoud]

(In reply to comment #16)
> Ok guys. There is an extension for this bug. It called "Right Encoding"
>
https://addons.update.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&version=1.0&os=Windows&numpg=50&id=371
> it is only a 0.1 version but it works.
> 
> Have fun.

WFM - thanks

Comment 18

[Adam Guthrie]

*** Bug 316269 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 19

[Jo Hermans]

*** Bug 321226 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 20

[steveninchrist]

I think for me, I guy who live in Hong Kong, would understand the need alot. For me, the first time I use FireFox, the first thing I try is that, where can I get the encoding. That's true!

In Hong Kong, we will always recieve mail(web mail) and go to web sites with Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese, or even somethings Unicode. The first time I use FireFox I just think it's so troublesome to go to the Toolbar for everytime I need to change the encoding. AND, I found that this time I change the encoding in FireFox, next time I visit the site again, the encoding won't be saved!! So what it means it when I visit a site in Simplified Chinese (my default is Traditional Chinese) with a lot of pages, I need to change the encoding for everytime a go in a page!! It's extremely troublesome!!! I would like to use Internet Explorer when I am visiting the site!!! Although it is said to be more security problem, but at least I have never arrive this problem and I find it is much more convienent to use!!

Comment 21

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

I remember reading that the code exists in the suite to do the proper character encoding detection - can we not simply port that code over? No UI is the best UI.

Comment 22

[Alan Tam]

If everyone uses UTF-8, or everyone specifies the correct charset in their HTTP/HTML header, or auto-detection is 100% accurate, we would never have requested this feature.

Be frank, I keep hearing from my friends that many websites don't work in FF. Some caused by IE-only websites of course, but yet at times they failed to change encoding for a specific frame (that they were trained to do as a fallback). I can expect sooner or later they will simply give up and switch back to IE.

On the other side, see the long coversation in bug 70830. I really have no idea how to get the FF guys to do something constructive to the problem.

Comment 24

[eyal gruss]

please add this for 3.1 since "Right Encoding" is not being updated

Comment 26

[Andrew Hagen]

This bug is very bad for users around the world. Adding keyword intl. 

Adding keyword compat as IE's behavior has become expected around the web, and this bug report calls for us to imitate the behavior.

Comment 27

[石庭豐 (Seak, Teng-Fong)]

The "Right Encoding" extension has been working nicely until the release of FF3 because in the config file it's specified to work up to version 2.*.  But that extension is longer maintained and thus it's "broken".  The problem, as well as this bug, could be solved easily if this extension is incorporated into FF.

Comment 28

[石庭豐 (Seak, Teng-Fong)]

Typo: ... the extension is *no* longer maintained...

Comment 29

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

Not going to block on this for Firefox 3.6, and broadly agree with Asa's comment 4, though I'd support figuring out some way of doing this without cluttering the context menu.

Maybe a job for Page Info?

Comment 30

[eyal gruss]

mike,

the thing is that when you get wrongly encoded gibberish, it is more of a trial-and-error process to find to correct encoding (which can be quite frustrating).
moreover, the common use case is a webmail client, where for each new mail page  you may need to change the encoding again.
A "Page Info" option could be designed to allow multiple switchings per page with a minimal number of clicks. however, it would seem cumbersome for multiple pages, as it would be needed to be re-opened for each page, taking double the clicks.
it seems that a context menu item is the easiest fix for bug 70830, which has failed to get an alternative solution since 2001. as an "international" user getting the content to be readable is far more important than e.g. the efforts put into the localization of the ui

Comment 31

[ezervoud]

(In reply to comment #29)
> Not going to block on this for Firefox 3.6, and broadly agree with Asa's
> comment 4, though I'd support figuring out some way of doing this without
> cluttering the context menu.
> 
> Maybe a job for Page Info?

Mike, we are going around in circles for 5 years already!
You agree with ASAs comment 4 but you don't consider my response on comment 5 nor the attached example. Many times you just cannot access the menus!
In addition to that a context menu is giving you the option to just change one of the panes in, say a web mail client. The latter is necessary since several times the left pane is on a system font which is far more difficult to change than the right pane. So if you change the entire page you end up with half the context correct every time.

Comment 32

[:Felipe Gomes (needinfo for replies!)]

The option is always available through the menubar/Firefox button now. And in addition, for users who use unusual settings where the menubar might not be reachable there are add-ons that can add this to the context menu.