435370 - no helper applications offered, only save file allowed, content-disposition ignored

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: File Handling, defect)

Description

[Forest]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9b5) Gecko/2008050509 Firefox/3.0b5
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9b5) Gecko/2008050509 Firefox/3.0b5

Firefox 3.0b5 does not offer a choice of helper applications when clicking certain .zip file links, while others work as expected.  With the links in question, Firefox only offers "Save File" and "Cancel" buttons.  I did not have this problem with Firefox 2, when clicking the same links.

Digging a little deeper with the Live HTTP Headers extension, I find that the links in question...
- do not have ".zip" in their URL
- have a content-type: application/octet-stream header
- have a content-disposition: attachment; filename="foo.zip" header

I'm guessing that Firefox 2 pays attention to content-disposition when detecting file types, while 3.0b5 is not quite as smart.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Click a link to a file whose content-disposition includes a well known file name extension, but whose content-type and url are not so helpful.
2. Expect to see the usual dialog box asking what helper application should handle the file.
Actual Results:  
Watch as Firefox gives you only "Save File" and "Cancel" options.

Expected Results:  
I expected to see the usual helper application dialog.

xubuntu 8.04 (hardy heron) linux
xfce desktop

Comment 1

[Forest]

I think there are actually two bugs here:
1. Firefox is not using all available information to detect a file type.
2. When the file type is not detected, Firefox is not allowing me to choose a helper application.

Comment 2

[Alexander Sack]

Does this still happen when you install the firefox-gnome-support package in ubuntu?

Comment 3

[Forest]

That package looks like a dubious fix for an xfce desktop, because the deb description claims it "allows it to use protocol handlers from Gnome-VFS" but xfce's file manager doesn't use gnome vfs filesystems.  I tried it anyway.

Yes, it still happens when firefox-gnome-support (and its dependencies) are installed.

Comment 4

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Not a core issue.  This is a pure UI issue with Firefox; they introduced the "simple" helper app dialog for some cases, and in this case that may or may not have been the right thing to do.  In any case, the core code in this area most certainly looks at the content-disposition header.

sdwilsh, was there a reason you dumped this in core?

Comment 5

[Shawn Wilsher :sdwilsh]

(In reply to comment #4)
> sdwilsh, was there a reason you dumped this in core?
Mostly because I forgot about Firefox::File Handling