546730 - File browser pops up when entering url for upload

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Bill Poser]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.7) Gecko/20100106 Ubuntu/9.10 (karmic) Firefox/3.5.7
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.7) Gecko/20100106 Ubuntu/9.10 (karmic) Firefox/3.5.7

The file upload page on an ISP that I use offers the choice of manually entering the pathname of the file to upload or using a file browser. I generally prefer the former. Firefox, however, pops up its own browser when I begin to type in the pathname entry box. In addition to improperly over-riding my choice to enter the pathname by hand, the browser is not even smart enough to use the beginning of the pathname that I have typed and instead screws things up by inserting its own default location. This problem did not occur in Firefox 2. The upload page is generated by cpanel "legacy file manager".

Reproducible: Always



Expected Results:  
Firefox should only pop-up a file browser when asked to. It should let the user enter text in a form in peace, even if it thinks that that text is a pathname.

Comment 1

[Kevin Brosnan]

The text box is not used. For security reasons typing into file input dialogs was removed. See bug 258875 for details as to why this decision was made.

Comment 2

[Bill Poser]

I see the reasoning, but in view of the serious degradation of usability for users like myself I continue to consider this a bug. Forcing a slow and tedious graphical method of entering pathnames on sophisticated users who work mostly through the command-line is objectionable. By all means default to the pop-up, but allow users to set a preference allowing use of the text box.