302751 - Missing Plugin alert should allow copying content's url

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, enhancement)

Description

[Francois Cartegnie]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511

When a plug-in is missing for a content, mozilla offers to search/and download
the required viewer.
Some plugins doesn't exists, and need to be viewed using third party applications.
Then, the user needs to browse the page source code to find content's url and
open it with the application, which is really painful in some cases.

The alert dialog, for missing plugins should then allow to copy content's url.

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Frank Wein [:mcsmurf]]

There is another way to get the URL, right click on the page, click on "Page
Info", then Tab "Media" and then look out for objects of type Object or Embed.
There you can easily save the content then. 

Comment 2

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

Is this bug still seen on current builds? If it is, add "qawanted" keyword. If it isn't, resolve WORKSFORME.

Comment 3

[Tony Mechelynck [:tonymec]]

Oops, I meant "helpwanted" keyword.

Comment 4

[aravindm]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.2.4) Gecko/20100413 Firefox/3.6.4
Please update if you are able to still reproduce with the latest nightly build  ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/nightly/latest-trunk/

Comment 5

[Ed Morley [:emorley]]

Removing closeme from whiteboard, since this still exists/is an enhancement request.

However, presumably this is a WONTFIX or at least a low priority since: 
- The plugin finder window will already cater for the common plugins out there.
- Websites should offer links to plugins if they use something unusual, if they don't, then surely that's their fault.
- Most plugins nowadays come with Firefox compatible versions, so the whole "Some plugins don't exist, and need to be viewed using third party
applications." argument from comment 0 is less relevant now.
- Giving the user the URL more visibly for the content may not always be useful as it may only run in-page/with the specific plugin anyway - and the user might try to use the URL instead of using the plugin finder window/website's own plugin download link.
- There is a fairly easy workaround to get the original content URL, given in comment 1.

Thoughts?

Comment 6

[u279076]

Doing so would also need to be given a security review.  Websites could present a fake plugin install and presumably redirect people to an attack site via this proposed URL mechanism.

Comment 7

[Benjamin Smedberg]

I do think we should consider displaying a "download the content" link, especially as we move toward the ability to have click-to-play plugins in general. If I disable the Acrobat plugin, I still want to get to the content via download.

Comment 8

[Benjamin Smedberg]

We're going to display fallback content and not do more complex things now.