309330 - unable to force the download of a location bar address

Status: RESOLVED INACTIVE

(Firefox :: Address Bar, enhancement)

Description

[Stefan A. Möller]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; de-DE; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050717 Firefox/1.0.6
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; de-DE; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050717 Firefox/1.0.6

How do I save this file to disk?

mike.eire.ca/ext/aac.xpi

("http://" omitted intentionally. No link to click onto, just plain text.)


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Copy the above URL (mike.eire.ca/ext/aac.xpi) into the location bar
2. Press shift+enter (or any other keyboard shortcut in combination with enter)


Actual Results:  
Firefox is adding "http://www." and ".net" or something similar to the URL. Nice
feature, but doesn't help here. There seems to be no way to force the "Save As"
dialog.

Expected Results:  
The should be a keyboard shortcut to force downloading an URL. Like
Mozilla/SeaMonkey has (shift+enter in location bar).

Comment 1

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20050919
Firefox/1.6a1 ID:2005091922

It triggers an xpi install if pasted in the locationbar. Pasted in the IE
locationbar it triggers a download dialog.
It is no url so it is not possible to rightclick > save. 

Comment 2

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

(In reply to comment #1)

> It is no url

I meant: no link

Comment 3

[John Vandenberg]

Bug 259707 is causing the URL to be mangled on shift/ctrl-enter, preventing
installation.

> There seems to be no way to force the "Save As" dialog.

This is correct.  The file you are trying to save is an XPI file.  Firefox has a
default association with this file type, which launches the Extension installer.
 You may find an extension such as MR:Tech's Install
(http://www.mrtech.com/extensions/) useful to download extensions.

It is possible to force a save as dialog in Firefox.  Creating a test html page
with a link to the XPI file, right click on the link, and save as.

The "Keyboard shortcuts" help page does not list any way to force a link in the
URLBar to be downloaded instead of viewed.  I doubt that there is sufficient
need for a UI for this, but if there was, it would be an enhancement, and it
would also need to support saving a mpeg directly to disk instead of opening in
the applicable plugin.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 259707 ***

Comment 4

[Stefan A. Möller]

This is no duplicate of bug 259707. This bug is about saving xpi files to disk.
This bug is not about autocomplete. The autocomplete issue is just a side effect
in my example. (I've mentioned those keybord shortcuts solely as an example what
to do when using Mozilla Suite.) Even if bug 259707 is fixed, the "save as"
problem will remain.

> It is possible to force a save as dialog in Firefox. Creating a test html
> page with a link to the XPI file, right click on the link, and save as.

That's not exactly brilliant.

> it would also need to support saving a mpeg directly to disk instead of
> opening in the applicable plugin.

Well, yes.

Comment 5

[[:Aleksej]]

See also bug 253816, bug 191094, bug 67178.

Comment 6

[u279076]

Pasting the provided link into my location bar on 2004 and pressing enter prompts me to save-as or open with firefox (which would start the XPI installer).  You reported that you are using Firefox 1.0.6.  Please upgrade to 2.0.0.4.

This bug is being resolved as WORKSFORME.

Comment 7

[Stefan A. Möller]

No, it's not working with Firefox 2.0.

You don't see this bug any more with my example file mentioned above, because the new security mechanism classifies mike.eire.ca as an untrusted location. Therefore no xpi install gets triggered.

I provide you with some more examples to demonstrate this bug:

smart-roadster-club.de/video/2004-02-16-werbung-fortwo-roadster.mpeg

adobe.com/swf/software/flash/about/flashAbout_info_small.swf

addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/downloads/file/15307/adblock_plus-0.7.5-fx+tb+sm+fl.xpi (trusted location!)

adobe.com/products/reader/pdfs/reader_user_guide.pdf

It is still impractical to save those (multimedia or something) files to disk, unless you are missing the corresponding plug-in, which is rarely the case.


(Besides: Is this really an enhancement only? It rather seems to be a regression to me, since it was always possible to force a "save as" dialog in the Mozilla Suite.)

Comment 8

[[:Aleksej]]

Is what you say the same as "It is still practical to save those (multimedia or something) files to disk, even if you have the corresponding plug-in, which is often the case"?

Comment 9

[Stefan A. Möller]

Ehm. I mean:
You cannot save the file, if you have a plugin which handles this file type (or if the file type is handled internally, e.g. xpi). Since you typically have some multimedia plugins present(e.g. media player), you cannot save those multimedia files.

Comment 10

[[:Aleksej]]

That's what I mean.
Do you think it can be a duplicate of any of the bugs from comment #5, especially bug 67178?

Comment 11

[Stefan A. Möller]

In fact there are several older bugs, which basically address the same problem:
bug 62253, bug 67178, bug 191094, and bug 200267. All core component or Mozilla Suite related.

Those came up with different ideas how to download an URL directly. However, one method already existed - and it still exists in SeaMonkey: shift+enter in the location bar (see bug 181724). That makes bug 62253 and bug 67178 more or less obsolete.

Firefox is the crux: With shift+enter being removed, or defective, there remains no way to save plain text URLs.

Hmm... I'm not sure if we should duplicate. This is mainly a Firefox thing.

Comment 12

[Shawn Wilsher :sdwilsh]

This is WORKSFORME in Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.4; en-US; rv:1.9.1b3pre) Gecko/20090107 Shiretoko/3.1b3pre RTSE/1.1.0.20081207 ID:20090107020449

I get a save file prompt with the url given in comment 0.

Comment 13

[Stefan A. Möller]

No it is *not* WORKSFORME. The example in comment 0 is not a valid testcase any longer (but I cannot edit comment 0). See comment #7. Please use the examples from comment #7.

Reopening.

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1b2) Gecko/20081201 Firefox/3.1b2

Comment 14

[Shawn Wilsher :sdwilsh]

(In reply to comment #7)
> It is still impractical to save those (multimedia or something) files to disk,
> unless you are missing the corresponding plug-in, which is rarely the case.
It sounds as if you are arguing for this but to not be fixed.

For that matter - the only reason you can't save those files to disk is because the plugin exists.  If the plugin didn't exist, you'd be prompted to save.

Comment 15

[Suzanne Smedberg]

The links provided in comment #7 all work for me, including the download from Mozilla addons.  I'm closing this bug as WORKSFORME.

Comment 16

[[:Aleksej]]

Does not work for me.  If I paste 
addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/downloads/file/15307/adblock_plus-0.7.5-fx+tb+sm+fl.xpi into the urlbar of 2013-10-18-03-02-06-mozilla-central-firefox-27.0a1.en-US.linux-x86_64, it tries to install the add-on, and refuses due to incompatibility.  I end up at about:newtab, with https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/downloads/file/15307/adblock_plus-0.7.5-fx+tb+sm+fl.xpi in the urlbar, with no way to download the incompatible add-on.

Comment 18

[BMO Automation]

Per policy at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Bug_Triage/Projects/Bug_Handling/Bug_Husbandry#Inactive_Bugs. If this bug is not an enhancement request or a bug not present in a supported release of Firefox, then it may be reopened.