525910 - 'Do this for files like this automatically from now on?'

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 453455

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[jebus197]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.1.4) Gecko/20091016 Firefox/3.5.4
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.1.4) Gecko/20091016 Firefox/3.5.4

Hi, whenever I download a file type with some kind of extension or other such as .doc or .torrent, or .avi or whatever, Firefox presents me with a dialog box to the effect 'Do this for files like this automatically from now on?' which allows me (in theory) to select the default action for that specific file type. Presumably this also means that this action should occur without further prompting for that file type in the future too.

The only problem is that it doesn't - and it never has. Over several computers and several years and different OS', from XP to Vista, to Windows 7, to Linux to OS X, every time I click on a file type with an extension like this I will still always invariably be presented with the same repetitive default action dialogue, which asks 'Do this for files like this automatically from now on?'

Is it not perhaps time, after all these years and all these iterations of Firefox, to perhaps consider fixing this small, but annoyingly repetitive bug?

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Download a file with a specific file extension.
2.
3.
Actual Results:  
File does not open automatically using the default filetype action on subsquent occasions. User is presented instead with the same dialogue.

Expected Results:  
If the browser asks 'Do this for files like this automatically from now on?' for a specific file type, preferably it should do just that.

Bug has been present since forever. Feature has hardly ever/never worked.

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

The file extension doesn't matter if you download something from a webserver, the content-type by the server is the part that matters.

An example, open this link :
http://mversen.de/mozilla/text/mozilla.rar

You should be surprised that Firefox renders this file in the browser window but the reason is simple, my webserver sends this file as text/html and Firefox can render text/html.
You can see the headers for example if you open http://web-sniffer.net and enter the URL there. Look at the content-type in the http response header.

Now your issue :
Firefox refuses to remember the decision for application/octet-stream because that content-type means only "general binary data" and Firefox doesn't remember the decision if the sever sends a content-disposition:attachment header. There is a third case with a sever that sends text/plain but the data contains binary chars.
Please provide an example URL that I can dupe this bug.

Comment 2

[jebus197]

Erm... I don't know. Any torrent site will do as an example. Try http://btjunkie.org/ - although the issue is by no means simply restricted to torrent sites.

If it's helpful, I'm using Utorrent as my default torrent file type handler and I have set this both in Firefox and in my global system wide preferences. I am also using OS X Snow Leopard, but as I have said this issue is not restricted to OS X, or to a single computer. It has existed for at least the last several years - in which time I have owned and used a large number of different computers and different operating systems, and this issue has been present throughout them all.

Comment 3

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

This page is using a link protection and that means you can not use http://web-sniffer.net

This site sends :
application/x-bittorrent
Content-Disposition: attachment;filename="xxx.torrent"

The content-type is ok but the content-disposition=attachment headers means that the client (firefox) should not handle this file (including launching a helper application) and should always prompt you for saving.

That the "do this" option doesn't work is by design but there is bug 453455, duping to that.

Comment 4

[jebus197]

Well if it can't do it, or if it's by design, then it at least the confusing dialogue should be removed. There is little point in having a dialogue if it's incapable of doing what it implies it can do.

Comment 5

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

That is the funny thing: It's saves the decision that you want to use the application X for the content-type application/x-bittorrent if you check the checkbox !

The next time Firefox encounters such a content-type it will launch the selected helper application and Firefox will not ask except the file is again send with such a content-disposition:attachment header that overrieds any configured helper applications.

I know, it's a little bit confusing and bug  453455 exists to improve the UI.