Closed Bug 268418 Opened 20 years ago Closed 20 years ago

Excel-generated HTML displayed as source plain text with visible markup

Categories

(Core :: DOM: HTML Parser, defect)

Product:
Core
Component:
DOM: HTML Parser
Platform:
x86
Windows XP
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

()

Status:
VERIFIED INVALID

People

(Reporter: peter, Unassigned)

References

(
URL
)

Details

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040910
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040910

This page
http://f3.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/AJiPQRmI9GJaQCSFQanCQgxIBtNqr8VeHelCtC--GsDG1W9jCznCq7K5ZU08SMyTHmt3ykcudDx1Va0FLdZbOWntzUWcUA/Kinglists/KINGS.htm
is displayed as plain text with visible markup. Here are the first few lines of
what I actually see on the screen:

<html xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"
xmlns:x="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:excel"
xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">

<head>
<meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=windows-1252">
<meta name=ProgId content=Excel.Sheet>
<meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Excel 10">
<link rel=File-List href="KINGS_files/filelist.xml">
<link rel=Edit-Time-Data href="KINGS_files/editdata.mso">
<link rel=OLE-Object-Data href="KINGS_files/oledata.mso">


Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to
http://f3.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/AJiPQRmI9GJaQCSFQanCQgxIBtNqr8VeHelCtC--GsDG1W9jCznCq7K5ZU08SMyTHmt3ykcudDx1Va0FLdZbOWntzUWcUA/Kinglists/KINGS.htm
2. That's it.

Actual Results:  
I see plain text HTML source.

Expected Results:  
I should see the formatted page.

I note that by pasting the text into the Composer source window and going to
Normal view I can view the document as expected.
The URL is a 404.

They were probably serving the page as text/plain instead of text/html.  If you
find another page of that sort, you can check Page Info to confirm that.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → RESOLVED
Closed: 20 years ago
Resolution: --- → INVALID
(In reply to comment #1)
> The URL is a 404.

Sorry, this is probably because of how Yahoo arranges its files. Part of the URL
may be a session ID. You can get to the page from
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NewChronology/files/Kinglists/ by clicking KINGS.htm.
> 
> They were probably serving the page as text/plain instead of text/html.  If you
> find another page of that sort, you can check Page Info to confirm that.

Yes, page info gives text/plain. I will ask them to change this. Nevertheless,
IE renders this page as intended.

But this is still a potential problem with Mozilla, because people moving from
IE expect Mozilla to render pages in the same way as IE. Perhaps it would be
appropriate if when Mozilla finds a plain text file which looks like HTML, e.g.
it starts with "<html", to put up a dialog box something like "This page appears
to be HTML although served as plain text. Would you like to view it as HTML?"

I suppose this would make this into an enhancement request rather than a bug report.

(In reply to comment #2)
> But this is still a potential problem with Mozilla, because people moving from
> IE expect Mozilla to render pages in the same way as IE. Perhaps it would be
> appropriate if when Mozilla finds a plain text file which looks like HTML, e.g.
> it starts with "<html", to put up a dialog box something like "This page appears
> to be HTML although served as plain text. Would you like to view it as HTML?"

That's exactly what the relevant RFCs disallow.  Whatever the server says the
file is, that is what it should be taken as.

The fact that IE doesn't do is an IE bug.
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
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