Closed Bug 69719 Opened 24 years ago Closed 23 years ago

QuickTime plug-in interferes with Mozilla internal handling of image/png

Categories

(Core Graveyard :: Plug-ins, defect, P5)

Product:
Core Graveyard
Component:
Plug-ins
Type:
defect

Tracking

(Not tracked)

Status:
VERIFIED FIXED
Milestone:
Future

People

(Reporter: mozilla.org, Assigned: peterlubczynski-bugs)

References

(
URL
)

Details

(Keywords: relnote, Whiteboard: wontfix?) 

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; N; PPC; en-US; 0.8) Gecko/20010215
BuildID:    2001021502


The QuickTime plug-in registers the image/png MIME type, which Mozilla already
handles internally. This interferes with how Mozilla handles image/png. Mozilla
should continue handling image/png content normally even when the QuickTime
Plug-In tries to take it over. Or it should allow the QuickTime Plug-In to
handle the content. I don't know whether this problem occurs with other plug-ins.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install QuickTime Plug-In version 4.1.1 (http://www.apple.com/quicktime).
2. Start Mozilla.
3. Visit a page with PNG images (such as
http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/png-MagnoliaAlpha.html).
4. Ctrl-click on a PNG image and choose "View Image as"

Actual Results:  Mozilla opens a blank window and then a dialog indicating that
Mozilla cannot handle image/png, even though Mozilla can handle image/png
internally or through the installed QuickTime Plug-In.

Expected Results:  Mozilla should show the image on its own, as it does if the
QuickTime Plug-In is not installed. Ideally Mozilla would show PNGs internally
no matter what, or allow the user to set in preferences whether PNGs should be
shown internally or through the plug-in.
Isn't is possible to choose which formats the Quicktime plugin handles like on
the PC version ?
Re: the above comment--yes, but changing the settings in the QuickTime control
panel doesn't seem to have any effect. Mozilla still behaves as described, and
about:plugins still shows the plug-in active for the relevant media types
My previous comment was incorrect--de-registering image/png by changing the
systemwide MIME settings for QuickTime does solve the problem I described.
However, I still think this behavior in Mozilla should be fixed--plug-ins should
not interfere with the MIME types Mozilla handles internally. Not a huge
problem, but one that should be fixed if possible.
Still a problem i have seen this before. Quite annoying not sure what to do
about it though.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
I've notice this too, I think it's a problem in the content handler that it lets 
plugins over-ride mozilla-defined typed. However, on the filp side, I can see 
how one would like a plugin to replace a mozilla handled content type. And since 
the plugin can be disabled by either removing it or in program settings (as in 
Quicktime), there is a simple workaround. Not quite sure what should be done 
here? Perhaps wontfix? But then again, we don't want Quicktime displaying our 
PNG's. Perhaps there should be a pref?
Assignee: av → peterlubczynski
Priority: -- → P5
Target Milestone: --- → mozilla1.0
Well, there is a setting in quicktime context menu where you can manually set 
"do not use quicktime" for png images. Once I do this and load this test page, 
mozilla directly laods the png image without asking me. I think, we should mark 
this wontfix?
There are a lot of other bugs in Mozilla that are more important to fix than this one, but I don't think it should be marked "won't fix."

The bug here is that given the choice between QuickTime and internal handling, Mozilla chooses neither (and claims it can't handle image/png) when it should choose one or the other.

Also, inexperienced users might not know how to de-register Quicktime handling of PNGs, or might not know that they need to. QuickTime registers image/png by default.

-->future
Status: NEW → ASSIGNED
Whiteboard: wontfix?
Target Milestone: mozilla1.0 → Future
This will need a Release Note to inform the user how to disable Quicktime 
handleing of PNG's or perhaps the installer can do it automatically?
Keywords: relnote
If Quicktime wasn't installed, then image/png would be handled by Mozilla.  But
after install, the fact that neither Mozilla NOR Quicktime handle image/png is a
problem.  CC'ing rebron to make a call on how important image/png is out there.
Arun, that may be a sperate problem that needs it's own bug, please explain.
png handling is important.  I don't think we automatically should let QuickTime
or any plug-in over ride mime types that we can handle natively.  If a user
wants to let something else handle a mime type they should set their prefs
through the helper applications area.  
Okay, but Quicktime is RUDE and automatically does this. It doesn't care if the 
browser can display it.

I don't see any easy way to fix this. How do we know when the user really wants 
to over-ride PNG with a plugin?

Perhaps we could have the installer ensure that PNG's aren't handled through 
Quicktime:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Apple Computer, Inc.\QuickTime\Installed MIME Types


Talked to Eric Carlson from Apple: Quicktime has a "Quicktime control panel" on
which you can decide whether a particular plugin handles a mime type or not.  If
you choose NOT to let Quicktime handle image/png, in 4.x, it doesn't do so. 
Does it do the same for Mozilla based browsers?  This could be a good test for
QA to conduct.
Arun, this is slightly more complicated:

1) By default, we now "sweep" for Quicktime in the 4.x folder.
2) By default, Quicktime handles PNG files (because early 4.x versions didn't)
3) Therefore, by default we let Quicktime handle PNG's.

The problem here: How do we know the user's intention? The user must be smart 
enough to know to go to Quicktime's control panel to disable PNG support, but 
nobody will do that. So, if we do it FOR the user, how can we be sure they 
didn't want Quicktime to do PNG because we either suck at them or crash?
point well taken.  this doesn't seem likely to make it for 0.9.1, which means:
1. if we 'sweep' then image/png won't work.  which in fact suggests that:
2. if Quicktime was never installed on any 4.x installation, image/png WILL work 
by default (mozilla) unless
3. a user installed Quicktime for 4.x but decided not to let it handle 
image/png.  the sweep took place after this decision, so image/png is handled by 
Mozilla by default.
** i suspect our 'sweep' strategy will generate similar problems in other 
places, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing (t.m.) **

this also affects win32 when trying to view a .png image, but only when alone.
Should a new bug be filed or would this (once fixed) fix that too?
Try removing the 2 png mimetypes from this list in the registry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Apple Computer, Inc.\QuickTime\Installed MIME Types
I removed them, no luck, even rebooted.

about:plugins shows:
QuickTime Plug-in 5.0.1

File name: C:\PROGRAM FILES\NETSCAPE\COMMUNICATOR\PROGRAM\Plugins\npqtplugin4.dll
image/png and image/x-png still are active.
I think you better go to Control Panel to tweak those settings on Quicktime MIME
settings...  There might be other registry entries that needs to be modified in
order to change mime types...

Using Win2k SP2, Quicktime 5.0.1 and Mozilla 20010601.
I tweaked Quicktime plug-in MIME settings via Control Panel not to register PNG 
images.
But Mozilla still loads QT plug-in when viewing this URL:
http://www.xchat.org/files/screenshots/xc_shot1.png
Thera are two mime type concerning PNG files:

image/png
image/x-png

Have you disable BOTH of them in QT control panel?
Proposed solution, plugins in the 4.x directory should only be used if mozilla
can't ha,ndle it nativly and plugins in mozilla's plugin directory should be
treated with respect. And of course someday down the road users should be able
to run down the plugin list and turn them off and on at their choice.
I have installed QuickTime 4.0 on Windows98, Netscape 4.7 is also installed.

Mozilla usually is able to show .png-pictures without help. But if I open a
.png-file directly in Mozilla, like typing
http://www.mozilla.org/roadmap-images/branching-09-May-2001.png in the
adress bar, it starts QuickTime, like Netscape 4.7 did.

At first I looked at the file-associations of Windows, but the extension *.png
is not associated with QuickTime, i.e. if I doublecklick on a .png-file in
Windows, it doesn't start QuickTime.

I postet this to netscape.public.mozilla.general and was pointed to this bug,
but I am not yet able to solve this.

In control panel -> QuickTime you can't change the mime types associations - at
least not with QuickTime 4 in Win 98.

So I tried the direct way by editing the registry the way mentioned above. I
removed the entrys for png-files and rebooted. But this didn't change anything.

Because there seems to be not only no workaround for unexperienced users but no
workaround at all in this case I think there should be done something in Mozilla.
At last, I tried renaming the plugin-folder of Netscape 4.7, and now Mozilla
works fine.

Platform/OS should be changed to include Win98, for on this OS it seems to be a
more serious problem than on Macs.
a. qt4 is much worse than qt5 which as noted does allow you to control mime 
associations.
b. netscape0.93beta is much better than mozilla0.91 and yet mozilla0.91 is many 
years newer than netscape0.93beta, peter: if you can't find a copy of 
netscape0.93 i'll send you one.

netscape0.93 (and 1.1N, 1.22, 2.02, and 3.04) has a ui which allows users to 
select:
( ) use browser as viewer
( ) save
( ) unknown: Prompt User
( ) launch application:
 /icon/ [                                                 ] <browse>

Netscape 4.77 has:
group 'Handled by'
( ) Navigator
( ) Save to Disk
( ) Application
  [                                                 ] <browse>

Where there are two icons displayed in the prefs dialog and one at the top of 
the Edit type dialog.

We really should be able to take the 0.x-3.x pref style and add an option to 
select
( ) plugin [                           |v]

And obviously in the case of image/png the default would be ( ) Browser and the 
user wouldn't notice that a few plugins are in the plugin list...
OS: Mac System 9.x → All
Hardware: Macintosh → All
For the record, QT4 does allow the user to configure MIME types on all platforms
it supports, including 98, but the choice is in the plug-in's contextual menu so
you have to open a movie in the browser to choose it. The configuration was
moved to the control panel in QT 4.1.

In the original Netscape plug-in API, the only way for a plug-in to inform a
browser of the MIME types it is capable of handling is through strings in it's
resource fork. Thus, when you reconfigure your MIME types in the QuickTime
control panel (or prefs dialog in 4.0), we generate new plug-in(s) with strings
to reflect the MIME types you choose (on Windows we generate more than one
plug-in because of a bug in Win 95 where bringing up the properties window of a
file with more than 255 characters in a resource would crash Windows Explorer).
At the same time we configure the parts of the registry where IE looks to figure
out which ActiveX control or plug-in to use for a MIME type
(HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\MIME\Database\Content Type\{MIME type}, etc) and record the
MIME types we have been asked to advertise to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Apple
Computer, Inc.\QuickTime\Installed MIME Types so we can tell when another piece
of software has taken one over.

Because we ONLY include the MIME types the user chooses in the plug-in
resources, if Mozilla is still using the QT plug-in for a MIME type not selected
in the QT config dialog it must not be rescanning the plug-in files after they
are reconfigured. Fabian's report of Mozilla using the QT plug-in only when a
png file is non-embedded sounds like another bug.
I solved this problem on my win2k system by removing npqtplugin3.dll from the 
Plugins directory of Mozilla.
The plugin code is for this bug would probably be located mostly in
nsObjectFrame::IsSupportImage():
http://lxr.mozilla.org/seamonkey/source/layout/html/base/src/nsObjectFrame.cpp#348
hmmm... I don't think this is Mozilla's fault unless some patch was recently
applied for this bug.  I just upgraded to Quicktime 5.02 and this problem has
been fixed!!!  I was using 5.01 and was seeing this issue.  I didn't realize, at
the time, that there was a bug for this, but it seems fixed now in the newest
version.

In 5.01, even telling Quicktime not to pay attention to image/png wouldn't keep
it from handling all png files.  With 5.02, telling it to ignore png files works
great!

BTW, I'm using build 2001071004 on Win2k (SP2)

All fixed :-)

Jake
WFM too with Mozilla build 20010710 and Quicktime 5.0.2 on Win2K.
Mozilla -> About -> Plug-ins does not show png associated with Quicktime.
(whereas another Win2k box with Mozilla 20010709 and Quicktime 4.1.2 still show
the problem and has image/png in the About:plugins page).
fxd
Status: ASSIGNED → RESOLVED
Closed: 23 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
vrfy mac brnch 0710
Status: RESOLVED → VERIFIED
*** Bug 89075 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 92926 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 93166 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 97591 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
*** Bug 100269 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I am afraid there are two reasons why I have to call for a reopening of this bug:

- With QT set to accept PNG images, the plugin sometimes activates and sometimes
not. It seems to be page or image specific. This should really be consistent.

- After I set the QT N-5.0.2 plugin not to take PNG images, it still does.

What happened? I am using the 0.9.4 release build and I filed the 100269
duplicate earlier.
To clarify, configuring the QT plug-in to not handle a given MIME type just 
removes the strings for that MIME type from it's resources. The browser uses 
these strings to see what a plug-in is capable of handling, so Mozilla should 
then not consider it when deciding what to do with that MIME type. If it chooses 
the QT plug-in for a MIME type that QuickTime can deal with, it will display it 
no matter what it's resources say.

I thought that was how it works. So why the inconsistencies?

The problem described by ovvldc@netscape.net 2001-09-20 09:25 is not really the
same as the one this bug originally addressed. I am having the same problem, and
I have filed a new bug 103934 to cover it. This bug should remain closed.
*** Bug 113060 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
This problem is causing Mozilla to crash, due to apparent Quicktime PNG bugs. 
(see bug 128922).  If Mozilla refused to allow overrides on some basic content
types, (e.g. html, gif, jpeg, png) this wouldn't be a crasher.

The more academic problem is that I might have another browser that needs PNG
support from Quicktime, so turning it off in the control panel for Mozilla would
break that app.

Can we not view the MIME types the plug-in registers as an 'offer to handle'
rather than an 'override'?
Product: Core → Core Graveyard
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