468778 - Poor image quality using mobile broadband - shift+A does not improve roll-over images ??

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: File Handling, defect)

Description

[Neil Montgomery]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.4) Gecko/2008102920 Firefox/3.0.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9.0.4) Gecko/2008102920 Firefox/3.0.4

I have started using mobile broadband so images first come in low quality, which can all be improved by pressing SHIFT+A - however, rollover images from the background of the web page do not increase in quality to a higher resolution so roll-over buttons or image-swap set-ups look really ugly .... is there any way to force highest quality in these pre-loading images?

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Use mobile broadband
2. Use SHIFT+A to improve image quality
3. Roll your mouse over any dynamic jpg image; like a roll-over button or an image swap map 
Actual Results:  
Underlying images remain very low quality 

Expected Results:  
Ideally, one would hope that on SHIFT+A all images associated with the page would be increased to high quality not just those being shown ....

I searched as many bug reports as I could in various forums - a lot of people have this problem but I could find no offers of a fix - the whole mobile broadband/SHIFT+A (all shown images) or SHIFT+R (a single image) issue is annoying but understandable, however maybe a SHIFT+[some other letter] needs to be created that ups the quality of underlying images .... ??

Comment 1

[Jesse Ruderman]

What application or web page defines the Shift+A keyboard shortcut?  In most applications, including Firefox, all it does it type a capital letter 'a'.

Comment 2

[Neil Montgomery]

While using Mobile Broadband Jesse, in Firefox Shift+A, unless you have a data input field selected, improves the quality of all images that have been sent to the browser with added compression. Shift+R does the same for single images. Mobile Broadband send images in such a way to improve speed, then the browser allows you to upgrade the images by choice; unfortunately, the Firefox (and Safari) do not upgrade the unseen images held in the background for roll-over or swap-image effects .... this is the bug I would like fixed.

Comment 3

[Jesse Ruderman]

As far as I can tell, "Mobile Broadband" is an abstract concept, not a piece of software that adds keyboard shortcuts to Firefox.  What specific software are you talking about?

Comment 4

[Neil Montgomery]

Get a grip Jesse - this is a site for bug fixing - as far as I can tell you have no idea about the functioning of either Mobile Broadband or the controls I'm talking about so why bother responding.

Comment 5

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

Probably because he knows an incredible amount about Mozilla's code, and this site is for fixing bugs in Mozilla's code, but you don't have a problem with Mozilla's code, you have a problem caused by your ISP's image compression being better than their script to revert it.

What happens is that when you request www.mozilla.org, rather than you fetching it directly from Mozilla's server, you tell your ISP that you want it, they fetch a copy, insert some JavaScript to do the Shift+R stuff, then as your browser requests the images, they fetch a copy, compress them, send you those, and only send the uncompressed ones when you interact with their JavaScript by pressing Shift+R to tell them that you want them to send you the uncompressed copy of an image.

If their script doesn't let you tell them that you want a better copy of a particular image, there's nothing that Firefox can do about that: you'll have to take it up with them, by telling them exactly what image on exactly what page they are blowing it on. (Or, by using some of the tricks that a little searching showed me work with some ISPs, like changing the browser's user agent string to make them think they should always give you uncompressed images, or by using their settings to tell them you never want compressed images, but there again whether any or any particular trick like that works depends on your ISP, and is between you and them, not Firefox.)

Comment 6

[Neil Montgomery]

Well thank you Phil - this is helpful rather than obtuse. However, would it not be reasonable to expect Firefox to have options for this in their preferences panel, from a user-interface point of view, given the potential increase in Mobile Broadband use? As I see it this is a bug that Mozilla could fix within Firefox since currently there is no option to 'never want compressed images' irrespective of whatever meddlings emerge from ISPs. This site seemed like one of the very few options for sending feedback to Mozilla while also getting external comment and the issue I raise here is one that many people have raised in the Mozilla Forum but that nobody seems to have answered there as well as you have here. So I think this is a matter worthy of attention by Mozilla, which relates directly to an issue between me and Firefox and which could be sorted by someone who knows an incredible amount about Mozilla code without leaving wee users to rely on tricks.

Comment 7

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

Not in a world where there's more than one ISP, no. You don't have "Mobile Broadband," you have "mobile broadband provided by Verizon" or "mobile broadband provided by Orange" or "mobile broadband provided by Whoever" (or for all I know, by a company I can't find any sign of, named Mobile Broadband).

Whoever it is, either they run their own system to keep track of which of their subscribers have told them they don't want compressed images, in which case they look up your preference when you connect, or, they don't offer the chance to choose not to get them; in either case, that's not something the outside world can affect. It's a setting in their server that they are making based on what they've stored about your account, not something that's based on how the browser asks for the page. The same goes for UA string tricks: either they do, or they don't, happen to send uncompressed images to a particular browser, but that's going to be different for every ISP and entirely their decision, and it wouldn't be appropriate for Firefox to pretend to be some other browser to trick your ISP.

As far as Firefox can tell, it just requested a web page, and the web page includes some images and a script to replace the images with other images if you press a couple of keys. It has absolutely no way of telling the difference between "your ISP sends you crappy images first" and "you're looking at a web page with a picture of a goat, and when you put the mouse over the goat and press Shift+R, the page will replace the picture of the goat with a picture of a pony." Sorry, but there's nothing we can do here: you need to talk to your ISP instead.

Comment 8

[Neil Montgomery]

OK, thanks Phil, I'm understanding what you're saying ... Firefox has no way of knowing what was in the original web page if O2 (for instance) interrupts the page and inserts some code to change it ... Again, thanks for your help on this and sorry to have taken a while to fully understand, it just seems PANTS that O2 or any other ISP could cripple the integrity of a website in such a way. Cheers Neil.