524077 - content encoding error: add clear cache hint in the message

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Celine]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; fr; rv:1.9.0.14) Gecko/2009082707 Firefox/3.0.14 GTB5 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; fr; rv:1.9.0.14) Gecko/2009082707 Firefox/3.0.14 GTB5 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)

The content encoding error message appears in some cases.
See bugs 488438, 446549, 453988, 460818, 469352, 493367... and similar.
Apparently the bug is still unclear and random.
But one known quick fix is to clear the cache.
The message should tell the user he can try to clear the cache.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Display the content encoding error message
2. it doesn't tell the user he can try to clear the cache

Actual Results:  
Actual message:
Content Encoding Error 
The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because it uses an invalid or
unsupported form of compression. 
    * Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem.


Expected Results:  
A hint to clear the cache should be added:
* Try to clear the browser's cache

A direct link/button may be helpful

Comment 1

[Jeremy Fee]

I'm cross posting this comment on several of these Content Encoding bugs...  We have had a similar issue with users of our website.  The problem seems to involve Range responses that are gzip encoded.

I used the httpfox plugin and noticed that every time the error appeared, the request included a Range and If-Range header, and the response was 206 Partial Content (even though I was hard-refreshing).

I'm not sure if this is a bug in mod_deflate, if range responses shouldn't be compressed, or in how firefox handles these responses.

To solve the problem we updated our apache config to disable Range requests using mod_headers, since compression seems to provide more value:
       RequestHeader unset Range early
       RequestHeader unset If-Range early
       Header unset Accept-Ranges

Comment 2

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

Reporter, please retest with Firefox 3.6.12 or later in a fresh profile (http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Managing+profiles). Also update your plugins (flash, adobe reader, java, quicktime, silverlight, etc.) Go to the developer's website and download the latest version from there. If you no longer see this issue, please close this bug as RESOLVED, WORKSFORME. If you do see the bug, please post a comment.

Comment 3

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

No reply, INCOMPLETE. Please retest with Firefox 3.6.12 or later and a new profile (http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Managing+profiles). If you continue to see this issue with the newest firefox and a new profile, then please comment on this bug.